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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" 



THE 



BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



HIS NAME SHALL BE CALLED WONDERFUL. 



LE KOY J.^&ALSEY, D. D. 

AUTHOR OF "LIFE PICTURES FROM THE BIBLE, ,: 
"LITERARY ATTRACTIONS," ETC. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

PRESBYTEKIAN BOAKD OF PUBLICATION, 

No, 821 Chestnut Street. 



t£o 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

JAMES DUNLAP, Treas. 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
of Pennsylvania. 

STEREOTYPED BY WILLIAM W. HARDING, PHILADELPHIA. 



^Mil 



PREFACE. 



The great saving truths of the gospel ought to be 
none the less attractive because they are old and familiar. 
They are indeed only the more precious because so many 
human hearts through all ages have believed them, and 
drawn consolation from them in life and in death. The 
story of the cross can never lose its interest or its power 
in a world of sin and death; and increasing millions every 
day bear witness to the truth of the prediction — " T, if I be 
lifted up, will draw all men unto myself." 

The present volume is but one among the thousand 
attempts which have been made, and to the end of time, 
will continue to be made, to unfold the beauties of Im- 
manuel, and to show forth that attractive power by which 
he draws a dying world to himself. No mortal pen is 
adequate to such a task. And yet it is permitted, even 
to the humblest, to approach, to behold, to admire, and 
then to tell, at least something of his glory. It is in the 
person and character of Immanuel, that we find the very 
essence of our faith. He is himself faith's great and all- 
satisfying object. We tell the story of salvation just as 
we tell of Jesus — the facts of his life, death, sufferings, 

(3) 



4 PREFACE. 

instructions, resurrection, and ascension to glory. We 
hope for life and glory beyond the grave only in propor- 
tion as our faith can rest on him. 

With such convictions the writer has approached this 
matchless theme, and has studied to unfold it, not in the 
lights of speculation and fancy, but only in that clear and 
sacred light which shines from the inspired pages. He 
would seek to commend to every dying fellow man, the 
personal character of the Redeemer, as infinitely the most 
lovely and attractive object that was ever revealed to the 
contemplation of the human mind. But while commend- 
ing it thus as containing our only possible hope of salva- 
tion, he has sought to present it in no other way than as it 
has been revealed to us by those who " beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth/' 






CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Life and Character of Jesus Christ 7 

CHAPTER II. 
His Birth and Early History 14 

CHAPTER III. 
His Baptism and Public Ministry 21 

CHAPTER IV. 
His Mighty Miracles 35 

CHAPTER V. 
His Matchless Instructions.. 49 

CHAPTER VI. 
His Immaculate Virtues 6T 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Manifestations of his Glory 82 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Bis Sufferings and Death 100 

CHAPTER IX. 

His Resurrection and Ascension 117 

1* (5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

TAG* 

His Mediatorial Offices and Work ,.»>. 138 

CHAPTER XI. 
His Second and Glorious Appearing 147 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Saving Power of his Gospel 157 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Recapitulation and Conclusion 195 



THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL 



CHAPTER I. 

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 

From all the characters portrayed in the Bible 
or exemplified in human history, it is a sublime as- 
cent to that of Jesus Christ. In a former volume* 
it has been our aim to trace the streams of holy in- 
fluence, so grand and beautiful, as they flowed forth 
over all the ancient world, in the lives of heroes and 
sages, kings and statesmen, prophets and apostles. 
We must now rise to the fountain head. We have 
been gazing on the stars of the greater and the lesser 
magnitudes, as for four thousand years they rose and 
set in the mighty firmament ; we must now behold the 
bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness, as he 
rises to set no more, in the clear and perfect day of 
a finished apocalypse. All that was lovely and of 
good report in these diversified characters of four 
thousand years, was but a preparation of the mind 

* " Life Pictures from the Bible." 

(7) 



8 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

of man for the unfolding of that one perfect char- 
acter, to which they all in a manner pointed, and 
from which they had in fact by anticipation bor- 
rowed all their brightness. For it is not more cer- 
tain that human hearts began to be inspired with 
elevating hopes by that first promise in Eden of a 
Saviour to come, than it is that human character 
began to be moulded to forms of greatness and 
beauty by the conception, dim and shadowy as it 
may have been at first, of God manifest in the 
flesh. So that we must regard the character of Im- 
manuel, not only as sending down its influences 
over the eighteen centuries that have followed, but 
as throwing back its rays to the very gates of the 
primeval paradise, and giving a brighter glow to 
every saintly and heroic character that adorned 
the patriarchal and prophetic ages. 

They all rejoiced to see his day, though afar off: 
and they were enabled to shine as lights in a dark 
world, because they were themselves illuminated by 
faith in a God incarnate — even that glorious living 
Redeemer of whom Job spoke, who should stand in 
the latter day upon the earth. 

Regarded simply in a literary and historical point 
of view, the character of Jesus of Nazareth is the 
wonder and the study of all ages. Regarded only 
in that light, it would be the greatest enigma that 
ever appeared in the annals of man. Taking his 
life and actions as recorded in the New Testament, 
and looking upon him merely as we would any other 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 9 

historical personage, aside from any claim to a su- 
pernatural mission and a Divine nature ; we 
have both a career and a character, to which there 
is nothing in the past history of our race that af- 
fords the slightest parallel, and for which nothing 
in any of the known elements of human nature 
offers the slightest solution. It is not only unique 
and original: it is infinitely the most unique and 
original thing that has ever been seen on earth. It 
is such an originality, as the forty centuries which 
went before, though constantly foretelling it, 
never produced; and the eighteen that have fol- 
lowed, have never found a duplicate. In the pro- 
gress of nearly six thousand years, it has appeared 
but once ; and with all man's improvement and 
vaunted approaches to perfection, there is not the 
slightest probability that it will ever appear again, 
until He shall appear according to his promise. It 
is not more certain, that there is one God only over 
universal nature, than it is, that there is but one 
Jesus Christ in all history. Simply as a man, he 
stands at an infinite distance from every other man 
of our race: even as the Bible says, "holy, harm- 
less, undefiled, and separate from sinners." 

It is said that the great masters of painting and 
statuary, in embodying their highest conception of 
perfection in the "human form divine," do not take 
the idea from any one living man, but from a thou- 
sand different subjects — combining the beauty and 
the strength and all the manly virtues of each, into onQ 



10 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

symmetrica] and glorious form. But the character 
of Jesus Christ was not the result of any such com- 
bination as this. It is most true that it was gradu- 
ally unfolded in all the prophecies, through a period 
of four thousand years, brighter and brighter 
glimpses of it being caught from age to age, and 
even impersonated in those great characters which 
typified his own ; but then it was not unfolded by 
man working upon man, and adding the excellen- 
ces of a Cicero to those of a Socrates, or even the 
higher virtues of a Moses to those of a Paul, but 
by God himself revealing a pattern of moral beauty 
from the skies, and thus giving the world assurance 
of a style of humanity, which had otherwise never 
been known to man. For certain it is, that the 
great masters of this world's wisdom, who through 
sixty centuries have been working upon man outside 
of the Bible, and independently as they think of 
its aid, have never, by any blending of the virtues 
of the great, or otherwise, produced even in fiction, 
such a character as the Christ of the old Testament 
prophets, and the Christ of the New Testament 
history. 

But it is not merely in a literary and historical 
point of view, that wx now propose to contemplate 
his wonderful character. It is in the full light of 
all the Scriptures, both of the Old Testament and 
the New, that we must estimate his character. We 
are not at liberty to ignore any part of the work 
and revelation of God. If we admit the Christ of 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 11 

history at all, we must admit the whole Christ of 
revelation. The moment we behold the veritable 
living man Christ Jesus, we are bound to recognize 
and adore all that belonged to him and marked him 
as something more than a man. His whole charac- 
ter — his whole-august and mysterious nature, human 
and divine — stands before us as distinctly in the Bi- 
ble, as any living personage was ever revealed to 
the eyes or the conceptions of men. It is Jesus Imman- 
uel who is the burden of all the Scriptures. It is 
not one like Abraham, or Moses, or David, or 
Daniel, or John the Baptist: but one, the latchet 
of whose shoes they were not worthy to unloose : 
not a helpless sinner of our race like the greatest 
of these, but one who is the Saviour of every sin- 
ner of the race who will trust in him : one, dwell- 
ing indeed in human form, like unto his brethren 
the sons of men, but in whom dwelleth all the ful- 
ness of the Godhead bodily. If it is the child of 
Bethlehem, the son of Joseph, the man of Naza- 
reth, the sufferer of Calvary, who is called Jesus ; 
let us not forget that it is the Wonderful, the Coun- 
sellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
Prince of peace, who is called Jesus. And we can 
no more set aside one class of the facts than we 
can the other. If we take the human and reject 
the Divine, or take the Divine and reject the hu- 
man, we do it at our peril; for in either case we re- 
ject the testimony of God concerning his Son, and 
the only offer of God for our salvation. 



12 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Now it is remarkable, that the proofs of the hu- 
manity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ are not 
only alike full and explicit in the Scriptures, but 
they are everywhere mingled together in exact pro- 
portions, and stated in precisely similar terms. If 
there is any point which is made plain, and guarded 
against the ingenuity and sophisms of unbelief, it 
would seem to be this. How do we know that 
Jesus of Nazareth was a man ? By his being called 
a man, and exercising all the functions, attributes, 
and works of man. He is called the man of sor- 
rows, the son of man, the child born — born of the 
virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, cruci- 
fied, dead, and buried. He eats, drinks, walks, 
sleeps, feels, thinks, suffers, and dies as a man ; and 
therefore he is a man. And how do we know he is 
God ? Precisely in the same way. He is called 
God, wears all the titles of God — the Mighty God 
— does all the works of God — assumes all the attri- 
butes of God — receives from men and angels in 
earth and heaven, the very worship of God. He 
is conceived of the Holy Ghost, announced at his 
birth as the Saviour of the world, attested from 
heaven as the Son of God, condemned to death for 
making himself God ; raised from the dead, justi- 
fied by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto 
the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up 
into glory as God manifest in the flesh. He speaks, 
acts, lives, reigns, and triumphs over all as God ; and 
therefore he is God. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 13 

Following the method hitherto pursued in all our 
illustrations of Bible characters, which is to let 
them speak and act for themselves as near as we 
can in the very terms of the sacred oracles, let us 
now address ourselves to this last and highest task 
— which is to set forth a brief but comprehensive 
outline of the life and the adorable character of 
Immanuel. And may the Spirit of all truth fill our 
hearts and minds with some measure of that con- 
ception of it which inspired the undertaking of the 
beloved disciple when he said, " The word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth.' ' 
2 



14 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



CHAPTER II. 

HIS BIRTH AND EARLY HISTORY. 

We need not stop to recite here the wonderful 
story of Bethlehem, which is so familiar to every 
child. Perhaps nothing in all the Bible is so univers- 
ally known. The shepherds watching their flocks 
by night, the angel from heaven declaring his birth 
that day, the multitude of the heavenly host prais- 
ing God in the highest, the star pointing out his 
birth-place, the wise men from the East seeking to 
find him, the babe lying in the manger at Bethle- 
hem, the gold, frankincense, and myrrh offered to 
him, the cruel edict of King Herod, the warnings 
from God to the wise men and to Joseph, the pre- 
sentation of the child to the Lord in the temple at 
Jerusalem, the timely flight into Egypt, and the 
safe return to Nazareth — all this we have heard 
from our lisping infancy. But though it has been 
told ten thousand thousand times, it shall never lose 
its graphic power and beauty as a narrative, nor its 
interest as the opening chapter in the scheme of 
God's salvation. It stands just where it ought to 
stand on the introductory pages of the New Testa- 
ment. It is the pure and crystal fountain, spark- 



HIS BIRTH AND EARLY HISTORY. 15 

ling with the waters of immortal life for man, out 
of which the life of the Son of God on earth is to 
flow, and to which all nations shall come to drink. 
Since the creation of Adam no human life had ever 
had so wonderful a beginning. And now at the 
distance of eighteen centuries and a half, there is 
to us as deep an interest in it, as to those who first re- 
ceived the glad tidings, " Unto you is born this day in 
the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord,'* 
and heard the song of an innumerable host above, 
" Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and 
good will to men." 

It was the fulfilment of those deep prophecies of 
Isaiah, which for eight centuries hitherto had found 
no adequate solution. " Behold a virgin shall con- 
ceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Im- 
manuel. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son 
is given ; and the government shall be upon his 
shoulder." It was the beginning of the fulfilment 
of that still more ancient oracle which had come 
down from the garden of Eden. "The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Loud and 
fierce has been the outcry which modern infidelity 
has raised against this simple and unvarnished 
narrative of our Lord's conception and nativity, in 
the opening pages of the New Testament. But we 
submit that such a conception and nativity as this 
is precisely the thing which the ancient prophecies 
called for, and without which those prophecies, not 
only never have been, but never can be fulfilled. 



16 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANTTEL. 

And we submit again, that on the supposition that 
those prophecies had a meaning in them and were 
ever to be fulfilled at all, by one who was Immanuel, 
God with us, God incarnate, God manifest in the 
flesh, the account of our Saviour's birth in the New 
Testament, as one made of a woman, "conceived 
by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin Mary," 
is not only a true and exact fulfilment, but one 
which commends itself to our reason as eminently 
befitting all the conditions and possibilities of the 
case. It is precisely what we should expect to 
occur, and precisely the manner in which we should 
say it ought to occur, if the prophecies of four 
thousand years are ever to be verified in fact, and 
the Deity is ever to be arrayed in mortal flesh. 
Given the fact of an incarnation of the Divine na- 
ture, and then the fact, that the incarnate one is to 
be a virgin-born child, and a real man with a true 
body and a reasonable soul like ourselves; and 
what other plan will our worldly wise philosophy 
devise for its accomplishment more worthy of God's 
infinite wisdom and man's belief, than the one re- 
corded by Matthew and Luke ? " This is the Lord's 
doing and it is marvellous in our eyes." But so far 
from discrediting the New Testament as given of 
God, it is a confirmation of it ; because it corres- 
ponds to every conception of the Messiah as re- 
vealed in the Old Testament; and its very unlike- 
ness to anything that man could have done, or 
would have invented, is a voucher of its truth. A 



HIS BIRTH AND EARLY HISTORY. 17 

Divine religion, conscious of the truth of God, could 
unfearingly go forth with that high and marvellous 
mystery on its very forehead. A false religion, as 
our sensitive and shame-faced unbelief shows, would 
have shrunk with scorn from inventing such a story, 
supposing it to be a fiction, and still more from the 
shame of telling it, supposing it to be a fact. That 
the Evangelists have told it, not only without fear 
or shrinking, but with exultation and joy, and 
that, upon the very face of their sacred books, and 
in the eyes of a proud and incredulous world, is 
itself a demonstration that it is not of men, but of 
God. 

It was in the reign of Caesar Augustus, the 
Roman emperor, that this great event took place. 
It was a time of peace over all the world — fit time 
for the advent of him who was the Prince of Peace. 
The temple of Janus at Rome, after the ceaseless 
conflict of ages, was now closed, as indicative that 
the world was at peace: and the temple at Jerusa- 
lem, spared by the haughty invader, was still open 
for that morning and evening sacrifice, which had 
so long foreshadowed "the Lamb of God, that should 
take away the sin of the world. The very fulness 
of time had come — the prophecies all ripe for fulfil- 
ment, the Jewish nation looking for its deliverer, 
the world at large full of expectation, and the pre- 
paration of four thousand years now completed. 
Thus at the precise point of time, and at the proper 
place, at Bethlehem of Judah, and of David's royal 
2 * 



18 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

line, glorious still though in obscurity, and of a 
virgin mother overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, 
and under outward circumstances of deepest hu- 
miliation combined with others of unearthly grandeur, 
was Jesus the Messiah born. It is no marvel to us 
that a child thus born should be a wonder and a 
study to all who saw him and heard of him — that 
his kinswoman Elizabeth and his virgin mother and 
the no longer incredulous iJacharias, should be filled 
with the Holy Ghost and utter songs of joy at his 
birth, that the shepherds should go home glorifying 
and praising God for all the things that they had 
heard and seen, that sages from the farthest east 
should come to worship and adore him, that the 
guilty Herod should be conscious that the rightful 
claimant of his throne was born, that the aged 
Simeon and Anna waiting at the temple for the 
consolation of Israel, as soon as they beheld him, 
should rejoice, and say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace according to thy word, for 
mine eyes have seen thy salvation," and that Joseph 
and his mother should deeply ponder all these things 
in their hearts. Had Abraham who rejoiced to see 
his day, and the dying Jacob who told of his de- 
scent from Judah, and Isaiah who spake of his 
glory, and Micah who marked his birth-place, and 
Daniel who designated the time, been there, they 
too, like Simeon and Anna, would have felt that it 
was enough — this is the Son of the Highest, the 



HIS BIRTH AND EARLY HISTORY. 19 

Prince of the house of David, the glory of Israel, 
and a light to lighten the Gentiles. 

From these scenes of his early infancy, until he 
was twelve years old, the sacred record is almost 
entirely silent. After his presentation in the tem- 
ple, the flight into Egypt, and the return to Naza- 
reth on the death of Herod, our only information 
is that "the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, 
filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon 
him." But this is enough to show he was preparing 
for his great life work. We know that his parents 
neglected nothing within their powder, for we are 
told that they did all things according to the law, 
and were accustomed to go up every year to Jeru- 
salem to attend the passover. After all that had 
been communicated both by the angel and the 
prophets of the Lord, and after all that she had 
herself spoken by the Holy Ghost, his mother 
would not fail to use every means of instruction in 
the sacred oracles, and to inculcate every lesson of 
early piety, that this child should be trained for his 
sublime mission as the Son of the Highest. 

Accordingly the Evangelist Luke gives us one 
striking and beautiful incident, occurring at the age 
of twelve, to illustrate how during all this early 
period he had, indeed, waxed strong in spirit, filled 
with celestial wisdom and grace divine. 

His parents, whom he had accompanied to Jeru- 
salem were returning from the great annual feast 
in the caravan of their kinsfolk and acquaintance. 



20 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Unknown to them Jesus had tarried behind. Miss- 
ing him, but supposing that he was safe in the 
company, (for, doubtless, all knew him and felt an 
interest in so extraordinary a child,) they went a 
day's journey, and then turned back in search of 
him. It was not until after three days that they 
found him. He was in the temple, sitting in the 
midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking 
them questions. And all that heard him were 
astonished at his understanding and answers. Mary 
and Joseph were amazed : and she said, " Son, why 
hast thou thus dealt with us ? Behold, thy father and 
I have sought thee sorrowing.' 7 And he said, 
"How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that 
I must be about my Father's business ?" They did 
not fully comprehend his answer ; but, as if to show 
that it was in no spirit of disobedience to them, his 
earthly parents, that he had acted thus, it is added, 
" He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, 
and was subject unto them. But his mother kept 
all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased 
in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and 
man." 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 21 



CHAPTER III. 

HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

When our Saviour had reached the age of thirty, 
the time of life at which the Jewish priests were 
accustomed to enter upon their public functions, 
conscious that it became him to fulfil all righteous- 
ness under that dispensation in which he was born, 
and that the hour was at hand for him to be made 
manifest to Israel as the Messiah, and to enter 
publicly upon the discharge of all the offices of that 
great work for w T hich he had come into the world, 
he left Nazareth and came to John, the son of 
Zacharias, in the wilderness of Judea, to be bap- 
tized of him. John, surrounded by the ten thou- 
sands of Israel, was on the banks of the Jordan, 
whither he had gone to preach the baptism of re- 
pentance, and to fulfil his own high mission, as the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the mes- 
senger who should prepare the way of the Lord be- 
fore him. Knowing that this was the immaculate 
Son of the Highest, and that, as such, he could 
have no need of that baptism of repentance which 
he was sent to preach, John, at first refused to ad- 
minister the ordinance to him. But being admon- 



22 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

ished that it was necessary in order to fulfil all the 
requirements of the law, he suffered it to be so, and 
thus publicly in the eyes of Israel, and in virtue of 
his own prophetic and priestly office, administered 
that solemn rite which marks the era of the Mes- 
siah's introduction into his public ministry, and to 
which he himself was accustomed to appeal as the 
very seal of authority, when the Jews disputed his 
legal rights in the temple. 

As a public inauguration of his ministry, nothing 
could be more appropriate and imposing than this 
baptism. A king in virtue of his being of David's 
royal line, a prophet and a priest in virtue of his 
being anointed by the Holy Ghost, and now publicly 
designated by John, he had both the testimony of 
earth and heaven, that he was the Messiah. John 
saw and bare record that this is the Son of God ; 
crying to the thousands of Israel, "Behold the 
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world." And he had a far higher testimony than 
John's, even that of the Father and the Holy 
Ghost. That august attestation is recorded in the 
following words: " Now when all the people were 
baptized (a people thus prepared for the Lord), it 
came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized and 
praying, the heaven was opened unto him. And 
the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, like a 
dove, upon him, and a voice came from heaven 
which said, Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I 
am well pleased." 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 23 

TI1113 attested and honoured by God and man, 
thus endowed plentifully with all Divine and human 
gifts, thus consecrated and anointed to the sublimest 
mission ever known to man, thus publicly proclaimed 
to Israel by his great forerunner, and thus, while 
the dew of youth was fresh upon him, and all the 
strength of opening manhood bounded in his veins, 
did Jesus Immanuel begin his work. 

His first great work was one of conflict. Its 
arena was in the unseen and spiritual world. He 
had come to destroy the works of the Devil ; to re- 
pair the evils which he had wrought, to atone for 
the guilt which man through him had incurred. He 
had undertaken for man — he had come to be God's 
Advocate and man's Redeemer. And so the battle 
began with the powers of the darkness of this 
world — a struggle for the mastery between the in- 
carnate Son of God, and him who, from the begin- 
ning, had been God's adversary and man's enemy. 
Crowned with all the glories of his recent baptism, 
strong in the confidence of God's favour, and full 
of the Holy Ghost, our blessed Lord is led away by 
the spirit that was upon him, not to the abodes of 
men, but to the deep solitudes of the wilderness, 
there to meet the enemy of our souls, there to be 
tempted of the devil. And there, single-handed 
and alone, amid fastings and hungerings which no 
mortal flesh but his could have endured, for forty 
days he wrestles with the prince of the power of 
the air, the god of this world. We shall not stay 



24 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

to depict the various changes of the solemn scene, 
as it is detailed by the evangelists. Brief as the 
sacred record is, and short as was its period of forty 
days, it has furnished the ground work of Milton's 
second great epic, Paradise Regained. And when 
that conflict was ended, and from every assault of 
the tempter, the Son of God had come off a con- 
queror, the gifted bard represents the great battle 
as fought, the victory won, the tempter foiled, lost 
Paradise restored, and " Eden raised in the waste 
wilderness/' But this is certainly a great miscon- 
ception of the work of Christ. The work was not 
finished, nor the great conflict ended with the forty 
days in the wilderness. It was but just begun, to 
be renewed and perpetuated through his whole 
earthly career. And so with deep significance, one 
of the Evangelists tells us, that "when the devil 
had ended all the temptations, he departed from him 
for a season.' ' And then angels came and minis- 
tered unto him. 

But this first great conflict being past, the next 
scene of his labours was among men. He had a 
work of love to do among men, as well as a war to 
wage with the devil. Hence we follow him from 
the wilderness as he returns in the power of the 
Spirit into Galilee ; preaching the gospel of the 
kingdom and healing all manner of diseases among 
the people. Through all the cities, and in all the 
synagogues of Galilee, the great burden of his 
message is, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC xMINISTRY. 25 

heaven is at hand ; repent ye and believe the gos- 
pel." When entreated by the people in one place 
not to depart from them, he replies, "I must preach 
the kingdom of God to other cities also ; for there- 
fore am I sent." And with such words of power 
and wisdom, grace and truth, did he preach, that 
the people were everywhere astonished at his doc- 
trine, and followed him from city to city and even 
into the deserts to attend upon his extraordinary 
ministry. Among the important opening acts of 
this public ministry, he called and ordained his 
twelve disciples, that they might be with him to re- 
ceive his instructions in all the mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven, and that he might send them 
forth likewise to preach the gospel to the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel. It was also at an early 
stage of this ministry, that he went back to Nazareth 
where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath 
day read in their synagogue that remarkable pas- 
sage from Isaiah which was then accomplished in 
himself, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be- 
cause he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to 
the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable 
year of the Lord." And, as he said unto them, 
"This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears, 
they all bare him witness, and wondered at the 
gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth." 



26 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

And yet, before lie was done, with such pungent 
power and zeal for God did he preach the truth to 
these self-righteous sinners of Nazareth, that, as if 
prophetical of the manner in which an unbelieving 
world would in all ages treat the messages and 
ministers of God, they were filled with wrath, and 
thrust him out of their city. 

It is no part of our plan to follow him step by 
step through his whole public ministry. This would 
require volumes. It was a ministry of incessant 
labours, extending through more than three years, 
from his baptism to the hour, when, hanging on the 
cross, he said, " It is finished." It was brief, as 
compared with that of the great body of his ministers 
in all ages of the church. But whether we consider 
its sublime beginning or its still sublimer close, 
whether we consider the mighty manifestations of 
Divine power which attended it from first to last, or 
the mighty results and influences which have flowed 
from it through all subsequent ages, it stands alone, 
unapproached and unapproachable in its solitary 
grandeur. No public teacher, no preacher of right- 
eousness, by any ministry long or short, ever made 
such an impression on the mind of man. By an 
unfailing attendance upon all the great annual feasts 
at Jerusalem, by incessant journeys through Galilee, 
Samaria, Judea, and the region beyond the Jordan, 
by public and private discourses in season and out 
of season wherever he went, the strong probability 
is that, during these three years, the vast body of 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 27 

his countrymen, as well as thousands from other na- 
tions, had listened to his matchless instructions. 
w The people which sat in darkness saw a great light, 
and to those who sat in the region and shadow of 
death, light was sprung up." 

We have one of his great public discourses re- 
corded at length — the sermon on the Mount — de- 
livered to his disciples and the countless multitudes 
that had come from all the cities of Galilee, Judea, 
and the region beyond Jordan — delivered not in any 
building, for there w r as none in the land large 
enough to hold the people, but in the open air, on 
the broad terraces of a mountain. And this is per- 
haps given as an example of the matter, style, man- 
ner, and surroundings of his ordinary popular dis- 
courses. Whether, therefore, we consider the deep 
and thrilling interest of the doctrines which he 
taught, or the words of grace and power with which 
he spoke, or the mighty works with which he called 
attention to his preaching, or the fact that both in 
Galilee and at all the great festivals of Jerusalem, 
he was always attended by an immense multitude, 
numbering sometimes, even in remote desert places, 
four and five thousand men, we must conclude that 
there were few, if any, of his cotemporaries from 
Dan to Beersheba, who had not heard, or had the 
opportunity of hearing this great teacher. 

Now, in this wonderful ministry, taken as a whole, 
we notice three great attributes, everywhere prom- 
inent, which at once illustrate the character of our 



28 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

blessed Master, and present him as a perfect model 
for all who would preach the Gospel. 

The first is his consuming and self-sacrificing 
zeal for God. "My meat is to do the will of him 
that sent me, and to finish his work." " I must 
work the works of him that sent me while it is day ; 
the night cometh w T hen no man can work." From 
the day in which the Spirit of the Lord was poured 
upon him in double measure, anointing him to 
preach the Gospel to the poor, to his expiring 
breath on the cross, his life was one great act of 
consecration to God in the work he had given 
him to do. In this spirit his days were spent in 
incessant toil, and at night when others slept, he 
retired to the mountains or the deserts to pray. 
When countless thousands were following him from 
city to city all over Galilee, and depriving him, not 
only of rest, but of opportunities for necessary food, 
Mark tells us, that his friends went out to lay hold 
upon him, thinking that he was beside him. But 
what were friends and kindred to him, who could 
say, " Let the dead bury their dead, but come thou 
and follow me ?" " I have a baptism to be baptized 
with, and how am I straitened till it be accom- 
plished !" " The Son of man came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a 
ransom for many." "Whosoever shall do the will 
of God, the same is my brother and sister and mo- 
ther." In this spirit he could appropriate the pro- 
phecy as true of his whole ministry : " The zeal 



HIS BAPTISM AND TUBLIC MINISTRY. 29 

of thy house hath oaten me up." And thus lie said 
at the last, " Father, I have glorified thee on the 
earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest 
me to do." 

The second great characteristic displayed through 
all his ministry was his intense and yearning love 
for his fellow-men. He beheld the multitudes and 
had compassion on them, for they were as sheep 
without a shepherd. But he was himself the good 
Shepherd. He w T as sent to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel. He came to seek and to save that 
which was lost. His great life-work, as it regarded 
man, was to go about doing good — to labour for 
others, to suffer for others, to bear our griefs, and 
to carry our sorrows. In all our afflictions he was 
afflicted. The foxes had holes, and the birds of the 
air had nests, but the Son of man had not where to 
lay his head. His only home was w 7 ith the friend- 
less, his bed at night with the sons of the poor, his 
daily work to save the perishing. Thus he w T ho was 
Lord of all, rich in all the treasures of the universe, 
and thought it no robbery to be equal w r ith God, 
emptied himself of his glory, became poor for our 
sakes, condescended to men of low estate, and with 
a depth of compassion that had hitherto been un- 
known to men or angels, carried the offers of im- 
mortal life and glory in his own person to the 
wretched abodes of publicans and sinners. There 
is no trait of his character, no theme in all the 
Scriptures, on which his inspired apostles love more 
3 * 



30 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

to dwell, than this fulness of all Divine and human 
love in the bosom of Jesus. " The love of Christ 
constraineth us." It was in his life, as he healed 
the sick, raised the dead, cast out devils, preached 
the gospel to the poor, and answered the prayer of 
the dying sinner, even on the cross, that they be- 
held the highest manifestation of the Divine cha- 
racter, and learned the lesson — God is love. 

While holding daily communion with God, such 
as the world knew not of, he was, at the same time, 
in intense sympathy with suffering man ; his soul 
was all alive to human want and woe in every shape 
and form. He was touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities. He looked upon us in our lost estate 
with all the yearning tenderness of a brother's 
heart. He never sent the poor sorrowing suppliant 
empty away. Through his whole public ministry 
he was never too engaged to turn away from the cry 
for mercy. Through life, and in death itself, he 
had a heart to feel for sinners, and a hand that was 
ready to bring salvation. Even on the cross he 
could speak words of comfort to his heart-broken 
mother, open the gates of paradise to the dying 
thief, and for his murderers pray, "Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." At the 
grave of Lazarus he wept with the weeping sisters, 
and over Jerusalem — loved and lost Jerusalem — 
chosen city of his God and Father — city of David 
and all the prophets, which, even for their sakes, he 
would have died to save — over Jerusalem, when her 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 31 

day was passed, he stood and cried in all the bitter- 
ness of yearning love — "0 Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 
Thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather 
her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!" 
What a spectacle of love and pity was that ! 



"The Son of God in tears 

Angels with wonder see. 
Be thou astonished, O my soul, 

He shed those tears for thee ! 
He wept that we might weep, 

Each sin demands a tear ; 
In heaven alone no sin is found, 

And there's no weeping there." 



The third signal characteristic of his ministry, 
was the calm, unfearing, and unfaltering purpose, 
with which, from the opening to the close, he pur- 
sued his great work of devotion to God and good 
will to men. His life, in all its plans, purposes, and 
results, was a perfect, symmetrical, and consistent 
whole. He did all that he came to do — suffered all 
that he came to suffer. Though he saw the end 
from the beginning, and knew the cup of suffering 
w T hich he must drink, he yet went steadily on 
without vacillation or shadow of turning. It is 
wonderful to notice how many opportunities to 
change his purpose pressed upon his pathway, and 
how many agencies, both of friends and foes, com- 



32 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

bined their power to divert him from his course. 
The temptations of the devil, the opposition of the 
wicked, the worldly expectations of his countrymen, 
the carnal hopes of his disciples, the readiness of 
the people to crown him as their king, the legions 
of angels that would have come at his call — these 
and a thousand other things conspired to any other 
result rather than that which occurred — a life of 
poverty and toil, and a death of agony. But 
through them all, and in despite of them all, he 
pressed his solitary way to the death of the cross. 
And, though he had often predicted it to his disci- 
ples, yet there w T as not a living being in the world 
who seemed capable of understanding the grand 
purpose that filled his own soul. There is some- 
thing august and imposing in this position of 
solitary grandeur in which he stood even while 
thronged by living men. The evangelists are care- 
ful to tell us more than once, that his disciples un- 
derstood not his sayings at the time. And then 
again behold him in his onward and unfaltering 
course. Though surrounded by enemies, and by 
dangers, thickening and growing more formidable 
at every step, he calmly faces them all, and walks 
unmoved amid the assaults of earth and hell, as one 
who feels immortal till his work be done. When 
warned by the Pharisees to flee from Galilee, be- 
cause the blood-stained Herod would seek to kill 
him, his reply was, "Go ye and tell that fox, Be- 
hold I cast out devils and I do cures to-day and to- 



HIS BAPTISM AND PUBLIC MINISTRY. 33 

morrow ; and the third day I shall be perfected. 
Nevertheless, I must walk to-day and to-morrow 
and the day (that is year) following ; for it cannot 
be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. " When 
at last, assaulted by all his foes and deserted by all 
his followers, he stood calm, silent, and alone before 
the judgment-seat of imperial Rome, and when the 
haughty Pilate, insolent with power, thought to 
overawe and intimidate him with the words — 
"Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not 
that I have power to crucify thee, and have power 
to release thee?" his only answer was an inculca- 
tion of the doctrine of God's providence and man's 
impotence, "Thou couldst have no power at all 
against me, except it were given thee from above; 
therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the 
greater sin." 

These three great attributes, supreme love to 
God, good will to man, and heroic courage in the 
path of duty, so seldom combined in the character 
of men, and yet so essential to the development 
of the highest virtue, shone forth in the person of 
Immanuel in all their fulness and glory. On a 
lower scale, and so far as that which is human may 
imitate the Divine, the very same attributes adorned 
the character of the Apostle Paul, and by their 
combination made him the greatest of all the apos- 
tles. And so in all ages of the church, those who 
have been called to be partakers in the labours and 



34 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

trials of that ministry which he so gloriously illus- 
trated, have excelled in power and abounded in 
usefulness, just in proportion as they have trodden 
in the footsteps and imitated all the imitable perfec- 
tions of the Great Master. 






HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 35 



CHAPTER IV. 

HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 

One of the most striking things attending the 
ministry of our blessed Lord, from its opening to 
its close, was the constant display of Divine power, 
by which even to the eyes of a gainsaying and un- 
believing world he vindicated his claims as the Son 
of God and the Messiah of Israel. These displays 
were so numerous and so stupendous, that it seems 
never to have occurred to any one of his cotempo- 
raries, whether Roman, Greek, or Jew, however in- 
credulous or inimical, to evade their force by deny- 
ing their reality. That was a device reserved for 
the ingenious sophistry of a later age. All that 
the eye and ear witnesses of his own times ever at- 
tempted to do, was to set aside the conclusions 
drawn from them touching his Divine mission, by 
ascribing them to some other agency than that of 
God. But in our day, such are the tactics of un- 
belief, that it is easier to deny their historical verity 
altogether, than to trust them into the hands of an 
inexorable logic, whose demands are infinitely 
better satisfied with the solution of the agency 
of God than with any other sol ition whatsoever. 



36 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

King Herod, when he heard of these things, 
accounted for them by saying, u It is John the 
Baptist, who is risen from the dead ; therefore 
mighty works do show forth themselves in him." 
The Pharisees who beheld them, said: "This man 
casteth out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the 
devils.'' The Roman centurion, who had gone 
through all the wonders of the cross and the sepul- 
chre, could draw no other conclusion, than that this 
was " truly the Son of God." Nicodemus, a master 
in Israel, had arrived at the same conclusion long 
before : " No man can do these miracles that thou 
doest except God be with him." But modern ra- 
tionalism, too proud to follow the superstitious cre- 
dulity either of Herod or the Pharisees, and too 
undevout to confess with Nicodemus and the centu- 
rion, that this is the finger of God, seeks relief 
from argument and an easy solution of all the facts, 
by denying that the facts ever existed. The solu- 
tion is short enough, and it might ere long, perhaps, 
find admirers, were it not that the facts have been 
reported on evidence which can never be set aside 
without overthrowing the truth of all history. 

It is not our province here to enter upon the dis- 
cussion of this evidence. Nor is it needful. It is 
enough to say, that the facts of the gospel history, both 
its ordinary and its extraordinary facts, are estab- 
lished on the testimony of witnesses as numerous and 
as competent as any in the annals of human history. 
The gospel history is a record of innumerable facts, 



BIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 37 

great and small, occurring in the ordinary course 
of human affairs, which no mortal ever thought of 
questioning, though we know them on the authority 
of that record alone. It is, at the same time, a 
record of many extraordinary or supernatural facts, 
including all the mighty miracles of our Saviour's 
life, which no mortal would have ever thought of 
questioning any more than the others, except for 
their being out of the ordinary course of human 
events. But it is to be observed, that our know- 
ledge and belief of the two classes of facts rest 
precisely on the same ground — which, indeed, is the 
ground of all history — the testimony of competent 
witnesses. For the mighty miracles of Christ and 
all the supernatural events of the New Testament, 
we have as many infallible proofs and as many com- 
petent witnesses, as we have for all its ordinary 
events, great and small ; because the witnesses and 
the proofs are precisely the same for both. The 
historians who tell us Jesus lived and died, are the 
same who tell us that he rose from the dead and 
ascended to heaven. On* what ground then are they 
to be believed in the one case and discredited in the 
other ? Nay, more, the world is compelled to 
credit their testimony on all these ordinary historical 
facts, because there are other witnesses outside of 
the Bible who avouch the same, and the keenest 
criticism of eighteen centuries has never yet con- 
victed them of falsehood on any known historical 
event. On what ground then does infidelity set 
4 



38 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

aside their testimony, on certain great facts lying 
outside of the domain of secular history, when on' a 
thousand things lying within the domain of that 
history, infidelity is compelled to admit that they 
have always reported the truth, and never once 
spoken falsely ? For the man who credits the 
general voice of history, and credits even the histo- 
rians of the new Testament on a thousand minor 
points, and then deliberately rejects all the great 
points on which they give their most solemn and 
emphatic testimony, the only fitting answer is that 
of the Master himself on another occasion : " Out 
of thine own mouth will I condemn thee, thou 
wicked servant." 

But, as touching the credibility of the miracles of 
Christ, it should certainly go far to vindicate their 
claims, even at the bar of the most sceptical phi- 
losophy, to consider the person by whom and the 
object for which they were wrought. All the parts 
of the gospel history have an intrinsic fitness and 
harmony with each other; and its facts are no more 
to be judged of singly and disjunctively, than are 
the facts of Astronomy or any other science to be 
judged of out of their connections and harmonious 
adaptations. Now let this principle be applied 
to the miracles of Christ. And who will deny — 
supposing it to be possible for God to display his 
mighty power on earth, and probable that he would 
ever do it — that the incarnation of the Son of God 
was an occasion worthy of the exercise of that 



HIS MKUITY MIRACLES. 39 

miraculous power. By whom ought signs and won- 
ders and mighty works to be done, if not by God 
manifest in the flesh? And for what ends ought 
they to be wrought, if not that he, with all the 
overflowing bounty of a God, might pour salvation 
upon the perishing, and vindicate to men and angels 
his amazing mission of love and mercy in this guilty 
world ? Once admit the fact of the presence of the 
incarnate Son of God on earth, and you have an 
occasion, an object, and an agent, worthy of all 
these displays of Divine power. Once conceive of 
Jesus of Nazareth as being all that he claimed to 
be, and all the prophets said, and so far from its 
being an incredible thing that he should raise the 
dead or do anything else which God can do, the 
more he displays these mighty powers, the more 
easily can we believe in him. In this state of things 
— in the presence of Immanuel — God with us — we 
ascend at once into a higher and purer realm of 
being, where miracle is the recognized law, and the 
ordinary course of things would be anomalous and 
abnormal. When God w T orks, it is easier for man to 
believe with miracles than without them. 

Familiarized to displays of Divine power, as the 
Jewish mind had been by the whole past history of 
the nation, it was still filled with astonishment and 
awe at the miracles of Christ. The amazement 
arose not from the fact that such works should be 
done ; for, on that score, a Jew had nothing to 
doubt ; but that one who belonged to the common 



40 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

people, a man without profession or learning, an 
humble Galilean, whom many had known from his 
childhood, should do such works. Wherever he 
went the people marvelled, saying, " It was never 
so seen in Israel." When he came into his own 
country, they were still more astonished, saying, 
" Whence hath this man this wisdom and these 
mighty works ? Is not this the carpenter's son ? 
Is not his mother called Mary ? and his brethren 
James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas ? And 
his sisters, are they not all with us ? Whence then 
hath this man all these things?" Though this was 
the language of unbelief, it still shows how deep 
was the feeling of wonder in the public mind 
touching these mighty works. The wonder was 
natural enough, at least at the first. For, on the 
one hand, here was everything in the outward con- 
dition, history, and circumstances of the young 
Nazarene forbidding the thought that he could be 
the great Prophet of Israel whose coming had been 
foretold from the first ; and, on the other, here were 
all, and more than all, the mighty works that any 
prophet had ever wrought by the power of God. 

The most usual designation of these miracles in 
the gospel history is that of signs, wonders, and 
mighty works. The fundamental idea of the Greek 
word, translated miracle, is that of power, strength, 
force. Where, for example, Christ is called the 
u power of God," it is the same word which in the 
New Testament is so often rendered miracle. These 



HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 41 

mighty works of Christ, therefore, while they are 
called wonders^ as referring to their effects upon the 
minds of men, and signs, as referring to the object 
for which they were wrought, are, strictly and pro- 
perly, as referring to their inherent nature and 
origin, powers, because they display the direct, im- 
mediate, and almighty power of God. 

Nothing is clearer from the sacred narrative, than 
the great moral purpose with which all the miracles 
of Christ were performed. They all, from the first 
of them, the turning of water into wine in Can a 
of Galilee, down to the last of them, the restora- 
tion of the ear of Malchus by a touch on the night 
of his betrayal, had a distinct public character, and 
the same great end in view. As such, they all be- 
longed to his public ministry, and formed an essen- 
tial part of it. They were not wrought, any of 
them, for his own personal convenience, or the ac- 
commodation of his disciples. But from the first 
to the last, they were all intended, even including 
those in which he fed the hungry multitudes, re- 
lieved the maladies of the sick, and raised the dead, 
to manifest to Israel the presence and glory of their 
Messiah — to convince his disciples and the world, 
that he was himself the anointed Christ of God 
even in this state of deepest humiliation. And as 
to the number and the glory of these displays of 
Divine power, during his three years' ministry, it is 
manifest, that just enough were given to answer the 

purpose and no more. On the one hand he was not 
4. * 



42 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANU^L. 

sparing of his miracles, when they were needed; 
on the other, he was not prodigal of them where 
they were not. At some places they were so abun- 
dant, that the sick were conveyed to him from the 
housetops, and there went forth healing virtue from 
the very hem of his garment. At others, we are 
told, that he could do no mighty work there because 
of their unbelief. It is easy to see, that one who 
possessed the power which Jesus did, could have 
wielded that power indefinitely. He who could raise 
the dead, in three different instances, at intervals 
probably of a year — first of a maiden just dead — 
then of a young man borne on his bier to the tomb 
— and then of one dead four days and buried, could 
have opened every grave in Palestine and filled the 
world with proofs of his Godhead. But how then 
should the Scriptures have been fulfilled, and the 
work of man's redemption accomplished? It is 
easy to see, that while his miracles could not well 
have been less numerous and glorious than they 
were, in consistency with the vindication of his char- 
acter and mission as the Son of God ; at the same 
time they could not well have been more so, in con- 
sistency with that estate of humiliation and suffer- 
ing, for which he came into the world. And thus 
on certain occasions of the brighter manifestations 
of his Divinity, we find him charging his disciples 
not to make them known till he should be risen 
from the dead. More miracles and brighter visions 
of his glory, would have overshadowed his humanity 



HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 43 

altogether, and defeated the great end of his incar- 
nation and humiliation. But the great end for which 
all his miracles were wrought was to convince men, 
as by the manifest testimony of God himself, that 
this was his Son, the Saviour of the w T orld, though 
for a season veiled in mortal flesh. Thus John says 
of his opening miracle — " This beginning of mira- 
cles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested 
forth his glory ; and his disciples believed on him." 
" This beginning of miracles," says Trench, u is 
as truly an introduction to all other miracles which 
Christ did, as the parable of the Sower is an introduc- 
tion to all other parables which he spoke. No other 
miracle would have had so much in it of prophecy, 
would have served as so fit an inauguration to the 
whole future work of the Son of God. For that 
work might be characterized throughout as an en- 
nobling of the common, and a transmuting of the 
mean — a turning of the water of earth into the 
wine of heaven." It is a little remarkable that the 
whole number of reported and minutely recorded 
miracles in the life of Jesus should so nearly cor- 
respond with the number of his parables. The par- 
ables, as enumerated by Trench, are thirty ; w T hile 
the miracles, including the one at the sea of Tibe- 
rias after his resurrection, are thirty-three. These 
are, in both cases, such only as the Evangelists have 
singled out from a countless multitude and recorded 
at length, as examples of all the rest. For they 
tell us that Jesus healed all manner of sicknesses 



44 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

and diseases among the people, and did many other 
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not 
recorded by them, and could not be without filling 
the world with books. 

This abundant manifestation of miraculous powers 
w r as looked upon by the people, as one of the infal- 
lible proofs of Messiahship. On a certain occasion, 
when the question was raised, whether Jesus were 
the Christ, we find some asking, as if to put the 
matter beyond all doubt, " When Christ cometh, 
will he do more miracles than those which this man 
hath done?" This is an incidental indication of 
the multitude of his mighty works. But there are 
many similar indications. For example, Luke 
mentions the case of a poor sick woman, who was 
healed by merely touching the border of his gar- 
ment ; and Mark gives us the following record 
— "And whithersoever he entered into any villages 
or cities or country, they laid the sick in the streets, 
and besought him that they might touch, if it were 
but the border of his garment ; and as many as 
touched him were made whole. " What an amazing 
manifestation of his fulness of Divine power was 
this, that the sick who thronged his pathway had 
but to touch his clothing in faith, in order to receive 
that healing virtue which went out of him ! Who 
can imagine any higher credentials of the presence 
of the incarnate Deity than such trophies of his 
healing power ? And once admit that he exercised 
such power, and who does not see how natural are 



HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 45 

all the recorded facts of the myriads upon myriads 
who left every thing to follow him, not only from 
city to city, but across the sea and into the barren 
deserts? 

His prominent, and so to speak, representative 
miracles, are the following : The water made wine, 
the healing of the nobleman's son, the first miracu- 
lous draught of fishes, the stilling of the tempest, 
the demoniacs in the country of the Gadarenes, the 
raising of Jairus' daughter, the woman with an 
issue of blood, the opening of the eyes of two blind 
in the house, the healing of the paralytic, the clean- 
sing of the leper, the healing of the centurion's ser- 
vant, the demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, 
the healing of Simon's wife's mother, the raising of 
the widow's son, the healing of the impotent man 
at Bethesda, the miraculous feeding of five thou- 
sand, the w r alking on the sea, the opening of the 
eyes of one born blind, the restoring of a man with 
a withered hand, the woman with the spirit of in- 
firmity, the healing of a man with a dropsy, the 
cleansing of the ten lepers, the healing of the 
daughter of the Syrophenician woman, the healing 
of one deaf and dumb, the miraculous feeding of 
four thousand, the opening of the eyes of one blind 
at Bethsaida, the healing of the lunatic child, the 
money in the fish's mouth, the raising of Lazarus, 
the opening of the eyes of two blind men near Jer- 
icho, the withering of the fruitless fig tree, the 



46 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

healing of Malchus's ear, and the second miraculous 
draught of fishes. 

In this long list it is striking to notice, first, the 
vast variety of subjects on which our Lord exerted 
his almighty power. They were such as to show 
his absolute mastery over the whole realm of nature, 
animate and inanimate, physical and spiritual. 
Not only the elements of matter, but the spirits of 
living men and the powers of the invisible world 
were subject to his control. Not only the winds 
and the waves obeyed him, but the very laws of 
matter were reversed, or new properties created at 
his command ; the water became wine, the sea 
solid beneath his feet, the loaves and fishes mul- 
tiplied into food for thousands, the living fig tree 
died at his word, and a fish from the deep brought 
him tribute money. And not only diseases of the 
body, and defects of its organs existing from birth, 
but the deeper maladies of the mind and spirit, all 
departed at his bidding. And further still, as if 
this were not enough to show the range of his 
power, the demons of darkness fled from their long 
fettered victims at his approach, and in three well- 
attested instances the disembodied spirit came back 
to its tabernacle of clay, and the tomb gave up its 
dead. If the problem were whether this is the Son 
of God, and the trial had to be made again in the 
face of all the universe, and we were called upon to fix 
upon thirty or more different cases or occasions, which* 
should be the tests of Almighty power, and proofs 



HIS MIGHTY MIRACLES. 47 

of a present Deity, we cannot imagine any thirty 
cases more to the point, and more utterly beyond 
the power of all the men in the universe to do, than 
precisely those things which Jesus did. For the 
very least of them involved a power as impossible 
to man as the creation of a world. 

But there is a second feature pervading these 
mighty works, as remarkable as their infinite range 
of power. It is their character of benevolence and 
mercy. In this they differ greatly from many of 
the miracles of the ancient dispensation. The 
miracles of Moses, of Joshua, of Samuel, of Elijah, 
and all the prophets, while vindicating the truth of 
God, were oftentimes visitations of awful judgment 
and destruction. Not so the mighty works of 
Christ. They are a mirror to reflect all the milder 
glories of Imtnanuel's character as well as to assert 
his Divinity. If we had nothing Jput his miracles 
to judge from, we should have enough to show that 
God is love, and that his mission was one of infinite 
grace and mercy to our ruined race. For besides 
their higher purpose, which was to glorify God by 
vindicating the Divine mission of his well-beloved 
Son, they all, with a few exceptions, such as the 
tribute money and the barren fig tree, were selected 
with another end in view, which was to display 
the deep compassion of Immanuers love, as the 
Friend of the friendless and the Saviour of sinners. 
Hence, if we look over this list, we shall find that 
they are mostly miracles of charity and mercy, 



48 THE BEAUTY OF EMMANUEL. 

wrought for the healing and the consolation of the 
poor, the sick, the outcast, the perishing — the 
wretched sons and daughters of affliction, for whom 
this world could do, and cared to do, nothing. 
More than two thirds of them are cases of healing 
and restoration — and that too of a character so ag- 
gravated as to lie utterly beyond the power of hu- 
man aid. Eight of them are cases in which the Son 
of God exerted his mighty power, either at the so- 
licitation or for the relief of some poor, suffering, 
and sorrowing woman. One of them was the hum- 
ble Syrophenician woman who could not claim even 
to belong to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, 
and yet did not depart without his blessing. 

Now, if we bear in mind that these recorded cases 
of the New Testament are given but as examples 
of all the other unnumbered signs, wonders, and 
mighty works which Jesus exhibited during his whole 
public ministry, we shall be constrained to confess, 
that they furnish a demonstration both of his Divine 
power and his superhuman excellence of character, 
which is absolutely perfect. And so he was accus- 
tomed to appeal to them, when the Jews demanded 
proof of his being the Christ, "The works that I 
do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 49 



CHAPTER V. 

HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 

It would be difficult to say which is the more re- 
markable of the two, and which contains a fuller 
revelation of the character of Immanuel — his mighty 
works or the words of grace and truth which he 
spake. The conclusion of Nicodemus would be 
equally applicable in both cases — No man can do 
these miracles, or utter these words, except God be 
with him. If the one is the vindication of his om- 
nipotent power, the other is the proof of his infinite 
wisdom. His works and his words alike declare his 
glory. The two are constantly interwoven through 
the whole course of his public ministry ; and while 
they mutually shed light upon each other, they pour 
their united radiance over his whole person and 
character as the great Teacher — the only begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

From frequent indications given in the evangelical 
history, it would seem that the astonishment every- 
where produced upon the multitude by his mighty 
Works, was but the counterpart of the profound and 
universal admiration inspired by his wonderful in- 
structions and manner of teaching. " The common 
5 



50 THE BEAUTY OF -IMMAN'UEL. 

people heard him gladly. " " They were astonished 
at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having 
authority and not as the Scribes.'' "About the 
midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple 
and taught, and the Jews marvelled, saying, How 
knoweth this man letters, having never learned?'' 
" All bare him witness and wondered at the gracious 
words which proceeded out of his mouth." Such 
are the terms in which the impression of his teach- 
ing on the public mind is described. And so we 
find the multitudes following him, with unabated in- 
terest, through his whole public career, not more to 
behold his mighty works than to listen to his match- 
less instructions. Well, indeed, they might ; for, 
though, as in the case of his miracles, we have only 
some of the more striking examples of his public 
discourses recorded, still we have enough to show, 
that as a teacher he stood alone amons: men — 
unique and original both in the form and substance 
of his teaching. 

If we look through the record of his discourses, 
as reported by three of the evangelists, the first and 
most obvious characteristic we meet with, is the 
peculiar form in which he taught the people and his 
disciples. It was in parables. It is true that para- 
bles had been used before to some extent. We find 
traces of them in the symbolical and highly figura- 
tive language of the Old Testament prophets. But 
no teacher had ever used them to such a degree, or 
given them such power and beauty as our Saviour, 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 51 

And none lias ever equalled them since. As a 
vehicle of the most exalted spiritual instruction — 
as a channel of conveying to the mind of man the 
deep things of God's kingdom, our Saviour's para- 
bles stand without a parallel in the literature of the 
world. And this is the more remarkable because 
the parable was a favourite form of instruction with 
all the Oriental ancient nations. Of course he did 
not confine himself to parables. Indeed, he seems, 
at the opening of his ministry, not to have used 
them at all, as we find him speaking to the people 
in parables for the first time, from a vessel on the 
sea of Tiberias. John has not given any of 
the parables, though he has reported some of his 
longest and most beautiful discourses. We know, 
then, that there were occasions, such as the sermon 
on the mount, and the farewell discourse of the last 
supper, when he used no parable. Still, after all 
these exceptions, it remains a striking feature in 
the public teaching of our Lord, that he spake in 
parables. The parables which have been reported 
at length in the first three Evangelists are the fol- 
lowing, as arranged by Trench — The Sower, The 
Tares, The Mustard Seed, The Leaven, The Hid 
Treasure, The Pearl, The Draw Net, The Unmerci- 
ful Servant, The Labourers in the Vineyard, The 
Two Sons, The Wicked Husbandmen, The Marriage 
of the King's Son, The Ten Virgins, The Talents, 
The Seed Growing Secretly, The Two Debtors, The 
Good Samaritan, The Friend at Midnight, The 



52 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Rich Fool, The Barren Fig Tree, The Great Supper, 
The Lost Sheep, The Lost Piece of Money, The 
Prodigal Son, The Unjust Steward, The Rich Man 
and Lazarus, The Unprofitable Servants, The Un- 
just Judge, The Pharisee and Publican, The 
Pounds. Besides these thirty regular parables, his 
discourses are everywhere enlivened with the most 
striking similes and analogies drawn from the ma- 
terial world around; and, in some instances, we 
have the higher forms of allegory, as in John's 
Gospel, where he represents himself as the Good 
Shepherd, the True Vine, the Bread of Life, the 
Living Water. 

Such was the outward form of his instructions. 
But there are far more wonderful things in his 
teaching than this. " Never man spake like this 
man, "was the report of the commissioned officers 
of the great Sanhedrim, when they went back as 
they came, and assigned the reasons why they had 
not brought him as a prisoner. Men clothed with 
the authority of the law, are not accustomed to be 
diverted from the execution of their orders, by the 
mere words of a peaceable, unarmed citizen. But 
here are public officers, sent expressly to arrest him, 
and returning without him, not because of the crowd 
which surrounded him, or any manifestation of his 
miraculous power, but solely on account of the 
words of wisdom which he had uttered in their 
hearing. There was no other reason to give, and 
they were not ashamed to give this, extraordinary 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 53 

as it was. How profound must have been their 
conviction of his superhuman character, that they 
could go back to their masters with such a plea as 
this — "Never man spake like this man." Un- 
doubtedly there is to us now, after the conflicts of 
eighteen centuries, a far deeper import in these 
words than the awe-struck hearers of our Saviour, 
who first uttered them, were ever conscious of. The 
lapse of ages, by the very failure to produce a 
parallel, has but deepened the impression, that no 
man ever taught as Jesus. If this was true of him, 
as compared with all the teachers that these Jewish 
officers had ever seen, or heard, or read of in their 
day, it is not less true of him now, as compared 
with all the men of every age and nation, who have 
appeared in human history. 

It is worthy of note that many of the highest 
tributes of praise ever bestowed on the character of 
Jesus, both in sacred and profane history, have been 
reluctantly wrung from his enemies. Witness that 
of the devils, whom he had come to dispossess — "I 
know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God." 
Witness that of the unrighteous judge who con- 
demned him to death — "I am innocent of the blood 
of this just person. Take ye him and crucify him, 
for I find no fault in him." Witness that of Pilate's 
wife — " Have thou nothing to do with that just 
man," and that of Judas — "I have sinned in that 
I have betrayed innocent blood." Witness that of 
the Roman centurion at his execution — u Truly this 
5* 



54 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

man was the Son of God," and that in the cele- 
brated Confessions of Rousseau — "If the life and 
death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and 
death of Jesus are those of a God." But all things 
considered, we do not know that either of these re- 
markable testimonies is any more striking than this 
confession of the Jewish police at the bar of the 
Sanhedrim — "Never man spake like this man." 
They had found him where he was wont to be, in 
the courts of the temple, on the last great day of 
the Feast of Tabernacles, surrounded by the ten 
thousands of Israel, and proclaiming the way of 
salvation and eternal life to dying men in words of 
grace and wisdom, such as Jerusalem had never 
heard before. They listen with the multitude; they 
are filled with awe ; their own hearts respond to the 
truth of this message from God, for they too are 
dying sinners ; and, instead of laying violent hands 
on the preacher, they return to attest his Divine 
mission. 

And now while our own hearts in willing and 
adoring homage respond to this eulogium of the 
great Teacher, let us ponder what it is in his in- 
structions that so separated him from all other 
teachers, and made him speak as never man spake. 

The first is the subject matter of his discourses. 
None before his day had ever spoken as he did, and 
few, indeed, had ever spoken at all on those grand 
themes which, from first to last, formed the staple 
of all his public and private instructions. Multi- 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 5fl 

tildes of men had in all ages of the world spoken 
more ; and it may be on a greater variety of subjects. 
Aristotle had among the Greeks, and Cicero among 
the Romans. But they had spoken mainly of the 
things of this life ; their grandest themes were con- 
fined to the present world. On the great things of 
God and eternity ; of life, death, and a judgment to 
come ; of heaven and hell, holiness and sin ; of the 
human soul in its wants and woes, its origin and 
destiny, its sense of guilt, its fear of retribution, 
and its longings after immortality ; of the deep 
wretchedness and ruin of our race, and the method 
of its redemption and recovery — in fact, on all those 
things relating to God and man, which the human 
heart is most concerned to know, Jesus spoke with 
a freedom and a fulness, possible only to a teacher 
come from God. On such themes as the mysteries 
of Divine grace, the essential attributes of the God- 
head, the doctrines of creation, providence, and re- 
demption, of man's true relation to God and the 
universe, of the way of salvation from sin, the 
resurrection of the dead, the church and kingdom of 
God in the world ; and, indeed, on all those grand 
inspiring themes which now for eighteen centuries 
have employed the highest intellect of civilized na- 
tions, Jesus spoke as never man had spoken. He 
brought life and immortality to light in the gospel. 
On all these things, w T here the uninspired genius of 
all antiquity, Roman, Grecian, Egyptian, and 
Chaldean, had groped in utter darkness, he was 



56 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

able to utter heaven's clearest oracles, saying, "We 
speak that we do know and testify that we have 
seen." These things are all so familiar to our 
minds, that we can scarcely appreciate the condition 
of the world before they were known or even con- 
ceived of. But independently of the truth of his 
doctrines on all these grand mysteries, it is perfectly 
manifest that he filled the world with new concep- 
tions of them. Except just so far as they had been 
revealed to holy men of old, who spake as they 
were moved by the , Holy Ghost in the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures, they were utterly hidden from the 
human mind. The patriarchs had looked forward, 
by faith, and caught some distant glimpses of Im- 
manuel's glory in the latter days, and the prophets 
had testified beforehand of these wonderful doc- 
trines of his gospel ; but outside of the Bible, it was 
true, for four thousand years, that never man spake 
like this man touching these great things of God. 

Nor is this all. It was much, in a brief career 
of some three years' labour, to have opened a new 
world to the thoughts of men. It was much to have 
added more to the stock of human ideas than all 
the philosophers of antiquity put together had ever 
done. It was much to have advanced the revela- 
tions of God to a degree of fulness and glory, far 
beyond anything they had attained under the accu- 
mulated light of all the prophets. And it was 
much to have given the human mind, on themes like 
these, an impulse which shall but deepen and widen 



Ills MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 57 

to the end of time. But, perhaps the most re- 
markable feature of the ease is, that he so taught 
all these exalted doetrines that the world with all 
its progress of scienee, and all its advancing intel- 
lect, has never been able to add anything to them 
since his day. Great and marvellous as have been 
the discoveries of science, and the accessions of 
knowledge in every field of the heavens and earth, 
since Jesus dwelt with men ; they all together have 
not added one jot or tittle to those great spiritual 
and eternal truths w T hich Jesus taught. On all 
these high and awful mysteries of God and man, 
and the universe in which we dwell, the world stands 
to-day with just that stock of knowledge which he 
left it, and no more, except just so far as his in- 
spired apostles have developed and recorded his in- 
structions in the New Testament. After all our 
laudations about the dignity of human nature, the 
advancement of learning, the spirit of bold adven- 
ture, of daring experiment, and of profound re- 
search, we stand, to-day, in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, precisely at the point where our 
race stood when the incarnate Son of God pro- 
claimed the truth — " No man hath seen God at any 
time ; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom 
of the Father, he hath declared him." We know 
from him the true worth and dignity of the soul, its 
fearful ruin and the price of its redemption ; we 
know from him the way to heaven, the forgiveness 
of sin, the life everlasting ; we know from him that 






58 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth. We know from 
him that God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and un- 
changeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, 
justice, goodness, and truth ; and that to see his face 
in peace, so as to glorify and enjoy him for ever, 
we too must be holy — repenting of all our sins and 
believing on the Son of God for salvation. This is 
the sum of all the instructions of Jesus, as a 
Teacher come from God. And, as for anything we 
can learn from all the teachers of this world besides, 
God would be as much "the unknown God" to us to- 
day, as he was to the Athenians when Paul preached 
on Mars Hill. 

The next remarkable element in our Saviour's 
teaching, separating him from all others, was the 
tone of superhuman authority with which he spoke. 
His peculiar manner of discourse was in perfect 
harmony with its weighty and solemn matter. One 
great secret of attraction in his preaching to the 
astonished and admiring multitudes who crowded to 
hear him, was that he taught them as one having 
authority and not as the scribes. He clothes his 
thoughts in the most attractive form of human 
speech. His subjects were the most important that 
ever challenged the attention of men. And he ut- 
tered his sayings with the absolute assurance and 
authority of a message direct from God: u Verily, 
verily I say unto you." "We speak that we do 
know, and testify that we have seen" — such was the 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. T>9 

habitual prelude of personal authority which took 
the place of that deferential appeal to a higher 
power with which the ancient prophets had always 
come, saying, " Thus saith the Lord." 

The common people were tired of the hypocrisy 
and cant of all their learned and professed ex- 
pounders of the law. They had indeed made void 
the law by their .endless traditions, and laid burdens 
upon men too grievous to be borne. The whole 
world was in fact sick at heart for something it 
knew not what, but something better than it had 
yet seen. Both Jew and Gentile were weary and 
worn out, with the ceaseless jargon of the schools 
and systems of philosophy falsely so called by which 
men, then as now, darkened counsel by words with- 
out knowledge. Here was a new and different 
teacher, whose words were Yea and Amen ; whose 
words came fresh from the heart, and went directly 
home to the heart. Here was one who spake as the very 
oracle and mouthpiece of God. It mattered not 
where was his temple, or who were his auditors, it 
was always the same voice of absolute certainty 
and of Divine pow ; er. In the crowded synagogue, 
or the still more crowded wayside, on the mountain's 
brow or on the seashore, in distant desert places, or 
at the great national gatherings of the people, in 
the domestic circle of affection at Bethany, or amid 
the public courts of the temple where he rebuked 
the pride of chief priest, scribe, and Pharisee, it 
was always the same tone of infallible certainty, 



60 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANtTEL. 

and of undisputed supremacy. It was more than 
the return of the spirit and power of Elijah. It 
was one, who while stooping to men of low estate and 
even unto babes, yet ever spake with the graceful 
majesty of a king, and the conscious authority of 
God manifest in the flesh. 

There are three different classes of circumstances 
in the life of our Lord, wherein we find him speak- 
ing with this tone of superhuman authority. 

The first embraces all those occasions in which he 
wrought his mighty works. These cannot be num- 
bered. But as above stated we have thirty or more 
of them, circumstantially narrated, when by a single 
word of power, he spake and it was done, he com- 
manded and it stood fast. We refer not now to the 
miracle itself, but to the authoritative tone of him 
who speaks it into being. It is precisely the man- 
ner of Him who at the beginning said, " Let there 
be light, and there was light." The eyewitnesses 
themselves were everywhere struck with this tone 
of supremacy and command in Jesus, "What man- 
ner of man is this ? For he commandeth even the 
winds and water, and they obey him. ,, "They 
were all amazed, and spake among themselves, say- 
ing, What a word is this ? For with authority and 
power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they 
obey him." Here indeed lies the striking difference 
between his miracles and all those of the prophets 
on the one hand, his apostles on the other — 4hat his 
are all performed in virtue of his own inherent 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 61 

power, without the intervention of other means or 
agencies. "I will," says he, "be thou clean. " 
"Take up thy bed and walk." "Stretch forth 
thine hand : and he stretched it forth whole as the 
other." "Daughter, thy sins be forgiven thee: go 
in peace." "Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise." 
" Lazarus, come forth ;" and he that was dead came 
forth, bound hand and foot. Such was our Saviour's 
manner of performing his mighty works. And on 
all these occasions he spake as man never spake. 

The second class embraces all the occasions on 
which he delivered his formal and public discourses 
in the presence of his disciples and the multitudes 
of the Jewish people. Of these we have remarkable 
examples in the sermon on the mount, in his de- 
scription of the last judgment in the 25th chapter 
of Matthew, in his invective against the scribes and 
Pharisees in the twenty-third, in the various dis- 
courses in the temple at the great Jewish festivals, 
as recorded by John, and in his farewell discourse 
to his disciples alone, on the night before he suffered. 
No man can listen to these solemn revelations of 
things unseen and eternal — things on which no 
mortal tongue had ever ventured to speak thus be- 
fore — without feeling their awful and unapproach- 
able sublimity. Especially is this the case with his 
last discourses, when we know that their author, so 
far as he was a man at all, was but a j r oung man in 
the prime of life, expecting voluntarily to lay down 
his life on the morrow for the truth of his convic- 
6 



62 



THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



tions. Socrates, under somewhat similar circum- 
stances, has been an object of the world's admira- 
tion. But mere admiration is far short of the 
merits of this case. No man can read and ponder 
the words of Jesus, without the conviction that their 
author stood in an attitude of moral power and su- 
periority over all the men of this world, such as no- 
thing could inspire less than the consciousness that 
he was either a teacher come from God, or God 
himself. 

But if he was the one, he was the other. If he 
was the less, then he was of necessity the greater. 
It is a case in which the less involves and draws 
after it the whole truth of the greater proposition. 
If he was a teacher come from God, as it is impos- 
sible to deny he was, then he was God himself, be- 
cause he expressly claimed to be God, and died as- 
serting the claim. A teacher come from God, 
w T hose whole life and actions had been what his 
were, could not have spoken anything but the truth. 
But one of the great truths which he never ceased 
to speak, through his whole public career to the 
very tribunal which condemned him to death, was 
that he w r as the Son of God, that he was equal with 
God, that he was God. So that if the miracles and 
the words of Jesus force us to the alternative that 
he was either a teacher from God, or God manifest 
in the flesh, that alternative shuts us up to but one 
conclusion — that he was all that he claimed to be. 
And now to feel in your inmost heart, that this is 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. G3 

the true and only possible alternative, listen to some 
of those words which no man before or since ever 
spake of himself : u Heaven and earth shall pass 
away, but my words shall not pass away. Not 
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that 
doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the 
glory which I had with thee before the world was. 
Then shall ye see the Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of heaven. He shall sit upon the throne of 
his glory, and before him all nations shall be 
gathered ; and he shall separate them one from an- 
other, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
goats. All power is given to me in heaven and 
earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Lo, I am with 
you always, even to the end of the world. He 
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and 
he that believeth not shall be damned. ,, 

When did mortal man ever speak thus ? How 
would such language have sounded on the lips of 
Abraham, or Moses, or Daniel, or Pairl ? Men in 
their folly have sometimes talked of Jesus as a mere 
man. But, leaving out of view his miracles, and 
taking only his words, the difference between him 
and every other man is an infinite difference. If 
ever there was a mortal disposed to speak in a tone 
of authority, and arrogate to himself all human 



64 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

powers, it was that mighty conqueror, whose edicts 
gave law to Europe and whose sw T ord had overturned 
her thrones. But Napoleon never spake like this. 
Even at the meridian height of his pomp and power, 
words like these, or anything approaching them, 
would have convicted him in the sight of the universe 
of being either a blasphemer or insane. And with 
reverence be it spoken, there is nothing that could 
exempt the mere humanity of Jesus from the same 
charge. It is only because he is God over all, 
blessed for ever, that these awful and superhuman 
words are the words of soberness and truth. 

The third class of occasions on which he showed 
the same superhuman wisdom, embraces all his pri- 
vate informal interviews and conversations — occa- 
sions when he wrought no mighty works, and de- 
livered no public discourses, but appeared most like 
a man. Witness that, for example, w T ith Nathaniel 
in the first chapter of John, and that with Nicode- 
mus in the third. Witness the interview with the 
young ruler, and the one with the lawyer who 
tempted him. See how he puts to silence, in suc- 
cession, the wily deputations from the Herodians, 
the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, till no man durst 
ask him any more questions. See him alone before 
the judgment-seat of Pilate — the arrogant Roman 
evidently awed into admiration and fear by the silent 
and sublime demeanour of his suffering prisoner ! To 
my own mind, there is scarcely anything in the New 
Testament more remarkable and significant than 



HIS MATCHLESS INSTRUCTIONS. 6{J 

this — that Jesus Christ, through all those scenes of 
humiliation, suffering, and the daily intercourse of 
life, in which it was necessary for him to appear 
most like a man and least like a God, should yet so 
speak and act as to make men feel that he was more 
than man. From the hour in which he stood in the 
midst of the doctors of the temple at the age of 
twelve, down to that in which he stood before his 
last accusers, and his final judge, there was some- 
thing about him — in his every word, look, and ac- 
tion — which made every one who came in contact 
with him, feel that he was a superior being. 

When we mark that calm, quiet, self-possessed, 
and yet authoritative tone in which he accosted both 
friends and foes, that gentle yet uncompromising 
dignity and sense of superiority which pervaded his 
every instruction to man, woman, or child ; when 
we follow him to the retreats of private life in the 
presence of his disciples alone, or in the bosom of 
the loved family at Bethany; when in these familiar 
and unstudied moments we hear him say, u My 
meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to 
finish his work. For I came down from heaven not 
to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent 
me;" when we hear him saying to the sorrowing 
sister of Lazarus, " I am the resurrection and the 
life ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead 
yet shall he live ; and he that liveth, and believeth 
in me shall never die;" when we follow him to the 
place of death, and hear him answer the last request 
6* 



66 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

of one who languished at his side, u This day shalt 
thou be with me in paradise," we are constrained to 
feel, that never man spake like this man. We bear 
testimony with Nathaniel, " Rabbi, thou art the 
Son of God, thou art the king of Israel." For not 
only does he speak of things men never knew be- 
fore, and never could have known ; but, unlike all 
the teachers of antiquity, who rested their instruc- 
tions on a foregoing authority higher than their own, 
he speaks, as one having absolute, inherent, personal, 
and underived knowledge of all things whereof he 
affirms. His teaching, like his power, is wholly in- 
dependent of man. 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 07 



CHAPTER VI. 

HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 

Nothing, perhaps, lias ever made a deeper im- 
pression upon the heart of the world than the com- 
passion of Jesus. It is a quality which all men, 
even the unregenerate, have been ready to acknow- 
ledge and admire, when, perhaps, they could see no 
other beauty in Immanuel. Mercy, compassion, 
sympathy with the deep woes of man, strikes a chord 
in every human bosom, that is not utterly dead to 
all the higher and better instincts of our fallen na- 
ture. Orators praise it. Poets celebrate it in their 
loftiest strains. Good men love and practise it. 
Bad men do homage to it, as the sum of all good- 
ness. The man who is ready to risk his life to save 
others, whose bosom melts with pity for the poor, 
whose generous sympathies respond to every cry of 
human anguish, wins not only the approval of all 
the good, but even the plaudits of those who are 
destitute of the attribute they extol. The heart of 
man was made to be moved by sympathy. It needs 
the sympathies both of God and men. There is 
scarcely anything which it needs more. It cannot 
stand alone. It needs something to lean upon. 



68 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

And hence, whenever a true hearted Howard ap- 
pears, braving danger and death, out of that yearn- 
ing love which he bears towards the perishing, all 
men are ready to take him to their hearts, not only 
as a brother but as a very idol. This deep and 
universal sentiment of admiration for philanthropy 
is vividly depicted, though with an approach to ex- 
travagance, in the lines : 

" The spirits of the just, 
"When first arrayed in Virtue's purest robe, 
They saw her Howard traversing the globe, 
Mistook a mortal for an angel guest, 
And asked what seraph's foot the earth imprest. 
Onward he flies — disease and death retire, 
And wondering demons hate him and admire. 

If such a character as Howard's, and such a life 
of self-sacrificing good will, may win a world's ap- 
proval — call down encomium from heaven, and ex- 
tort reluctant homage from the lost — what ought to 
be our appreciation of the virtues human and Divine 
that dwelt in the bosom of Jesus? If we could for 
a moment divest ourselves of the peculiar relations 
in which we stand to him as a Saviour and a God, 
and then look upon him simply as a fellow-man, as 
we look upon Howard, it is clear that we should 
even then behold in him an example of generous, 
heroic, and self-sacrificing virtue, which has no par- 
allel in the annals of mankind. Even on the score 
of philanthropy and brotherhood it has no parallel 
among men. It was a philanthropy embracing first 



HIS IMMACULATE YiKTi \:>. G9 

the objects of love immediately surrounding him — 
his disciples — and then all his countrymen, and then 
all the world. It was a philanthropy that went 
down to the abodes of poverty, of disease, of want, 
and held familiar converse with all its woes. It was 
a Divine compassion that sought to save the lost, 
the vile, the outcast ; that could eat with publicans 
and sinners, when such companionship was not re- 
garded as a virtue. It was a compassion which, 
while grasping the wide world, did not overlook 
even the babes and sucklings that clustered at its 
feet. The Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
others. He came to seek and to save that which 
was lost ; not only the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel, but the lost of all nations and generations 
of men. For our sakes he became poor. As before 
remarked, there is no theme on which the sacred 
writers dwell with greater delight and wonder than 
this infinite compassion of Immanuel — this conde- 
scension to the poor — this emptying himself of his 
Divine glory, that he might come to our relief — 
might bear our griefs and carry our sorrows — might 
become our brother, touched with our infirmities, 
tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. 
It is the burden of the prophet's vision. It inspires 
the song of the sweet psalmist of Israel. It is the 
story of all the evangelists. It is the meditation of 
all the apostles, as they carry the glad tidings to the 
end of the earth : "Ye know the grace of our Lord 



70 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Jesus Christ, that whereas he was rich, yet for our 
sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty 
might be rich." 

" Aside the Prince of glory threw 
His most Divine array, 
And wrapped his Godhead in a veil 
Of our inferior clay." 

"And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled 
himself, and became obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross." His whole public life, from his 
baptism to the great expiation on Calvary, was a 
life of sympathy with the suffering, and of merciful 
visitation to the poor. Though he was a man of 
sorrows, as bearing the sins of the whole world — 
bearing them onward to the scene of final sacrifice — 
and though he had not where to lay his head in the 
world he had created, and was now about to 
redeem — yet was he never known to turn away 
from a single sinner however humble, and however 
vile, of all the ten thousands that sought his favour. 

It has often been noticed how the character of 
Immanuel is illustrated in his life. The sacred 
w T riters describe his virtues by simply narrating his 
actions. They set before us a succession of the 
most touching and graphic scenes, which, far better 
than any words of eulogy, display his benevolent 
compassions, and the full glory of his human and 
Divine perfection. As his mission was to preach 
the gospel to the poor, to seek the lost sheep of the 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 71 

house of Israel, to humble himself to the ministry 
of a servant; so of necessity, philanthropy, benevo- 
lence, compassion, becomes the prominent attribute 
in this whole manifestation of his character. It is 
in the human life of Jesus, more than in anything 
else, that we behold the love of God. The only 
begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, 
came into the world, and led a life of compassion, 
not only that he might save us, but that he might 
thus reveal the love of God. Hence we find all his 
mighty works partaking of this element of compas- 
sion — wrought for the deliverance of the wretched 
and the outcast, or of the humble and helpless. 
The very titles of his acts of mercy are enough to 
illustrate his character ; and the great masters of 
art have found no higher study than to reproduce 
the scene. Thus we have, Christ healing the Sick, 
Christ blessing little Children, Christ feeding the 
Multitudes, Christ raising the Widow's Son, Christ 
restoring Lazarus, Christ weeping over Jerusalem. 
In all these and other similar scenes that make up 
the history of his life, the grand distinguishing at- 
tribute is mercy. It is the crowning glory of his 
manhood. It is the bright effulgence of that God- 
head, which shines out through the veil of this hu- 
man tabernacle. Nothing could be more appropri- 
ate than such a manifestation of celestial virtue. 
If we had been told beforehand that God would 
manifest himself in the form of a man ; that celes- 
tial Divine virtue would become incarnate and dis- 



72 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

play all its brightest glories in a living, human 
character ; and that such a revelation was to be 
made for the benefit, and amid all the sufferings, of 
our wretched, dying race, it would be the dictate of 
reason, that God, thus manifesting himself, should 
clothe himself with all those attributes of conde- 
scension, sympathy, compassion, and love, which 
we now behold in the person of Immanuel. This is 
precisely the form of virtue which such a manifesta- 
tion, for such a purpose, and in such a world, would 
demand. Nor can we conceive of anything that 
could be taken away from the character of Jesus 
Christ, on the one hand, nor of a single attribute 
that could be added to it on the other, that would 
make its adaptation more complete, and its beauty 
more symmetrical and glorious. One shade more, 
one ray less, would have marred that absolute 
perfection which now adorns his character. More 
of the Divine and less of the human; more of 
majesty and less of condescension ; greater displays 
of power and fewer deeds of love, instead of lending 
new attractions to the cross, would have only de- 
tracted from that matchless power and pathos by 
which it now draws all men unto it. 

There is nothing in the life of Jesus more signifi- 
cant of his immaculate virtue, and more in keeping 
with all the ends for which such virtue became in- 
carnate, than his tears. When we consider who he 
was, and why he came into the world, his tears are 
as indicative of his Divine mission and as precious 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 7o 

to us, as his mighty works. They arc the tokens 
of his unspeakable love. They are the seals of a 
sympathy in our sorrows, such as, without them, we 
did not know God could feel for sinners. They are 
the proofs of an interest in our welfare which as- 
sures our fainting hearts, that He, who has under- 
taken for us, is as willing as he is able to save. 
And it is striking to notice through the sacred nar- 
rative, how the tears of Jesus flow mingling with 
his mighty works. It was at the grave of Lazarus, 
and when in a few moments the sleep of death was 
to be broken by a word of omnipotence, that Jesus 
wept. The very scene which calls forth the sub- 
limest attributes of the Godhead — the scene of his 
almighty triumph over death and the grave — is that 
in which all the tenderest sympathies of his immacu- 
late human heart are touched, and find appropriate 
utterance in tears. If the war-worn conqueror of a 
hundred battles should be seen to weep in the mo- 
ment of his greatest victory, it would be but a faint 
approach to that power of emotion which filled the 
Son of God with tears at the grave of Lazarus. 
" Jesus wept.'* And those around, filled with ad- 
miration and awe, that one who had been known to 
give sight to the blind, should thus weep, said, Be- 
hold how he loved him! Could not this man, en- 
dowed with such power, and moved by such love, 
had he been here, have caused that Lazarus should 
not have died ? The mighty men of this world, in 
the height of their power, are not accustomed to 



74 THE BEAUTY OF IMMAtfUEL. 

weep at tlie sight of others' woe. But Jesus wept, 
even in that sublime hour, when he burst asunder 
the bands of death — wept responsive to the tears 
of those bereaved and sorrowing sisters who were 
imploring his help — wept in deep and yearning 
sympathy with all the sufferings and desolation 
which this much-loved family had endured in the 
loss of a brother — wept out of his full and unutter- 
able love for that poor dying human nature, whose 
countless griefs he had come to bear, whose dreadful 
maladies he had come to heal. Oh ! it was fit that 
the Man of sorrows should thus weep. Though he 
was the Prince of glory, the Conqueror of death 
and hell, it was fit that the Friend of sinners should 
weep at the grave. Though he could say to the 
stricken hearts around him, Thy brother shall rise 
again ; and, though he did say, with Divine power, 
ere those tears of love were dry upon his cheek, 
"Lazarus, come forth," still nothing could be more 
in keeping with the great work he came to do, than 
that he should weep at the grave. For all flesh 
weeps there. Every human being weeps there, even 
if he weeps no where else. There is no man so 
hard as not to weep for his dead. And there is no 
man so wicked or worthless as not to have the 
tribute of a tear when he is gone. It is one of the 
saddest, but one of the most inalienable portions 
of our earthly heritage, that we are all, sooner or 
later, called to weep over our dead. How significant 
and appropriate to the character of our great 



i 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 75 

Mediator, who cnme to rescue us from the grasp of 
sin and death, that we should have this simple and 
touching memorial of his love — Jesus wept! 

But this is not the only record of his tenderness. 
We read of another memorable occasion which 
called forth the tears of the Son of God. It was 
his last visit to Jerusalem — that which led him, as 
he had so often told his disciples, to go up for the ex- 
press purpose of dying there. It was on the day 
of his public and triumphal entry into the holy city, 
according to that ancient prophecy which had de- 
scribed, in joyful strains, Zion's king as coming to 
her with salvation, riding upon the foal of an ass. 
It was an occasion which, occurring only a few days 
before the great annual feast of the Passover, had 
drawn together an unwonted number of his friends 
and followers, as well as a vast concourse of the 
people, who had beheld his mighty works in Galilee, 
or had still more recently been the witnesses of his 
great miracle near Jerusalem, the resurrection of 
Lazarus. Leaving Bethany, where he had but 
lately wrought this mighty work, and accompanied 
by the vast multitudes, both of those who had fol- 
lowed him, and of those who had come out of the 
city to welcome his approach, he passed over the 
Mount of Olives, and came at once within full view 
of that glorious city. 

He had not seen it before for more than three 
months. He had left it at the feast of the Dedica- 
tion, a voluntary exile, because his hour had not 



76 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

then come to die. He had at that time bidden it 
farewell in the following sorrowful words, recorded 
by Luke : " Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! which killest 
the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto 
thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
together as a hen doth gather her brood under her 
wings, but ye would not ! Behold your house is left 
unto you desolate. And verily I say unto you, Ye 
shall not see me until the time come when ye shall 
say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord." 

And now that time had come. He was ap- 
proaching, to leave Jerusalem no more, till he 
should have laid down his life as a sacrifice for the 
sins of the world. "For," said he, "it cannot be 
that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.' ' He was 
coming in the name of the Lord to die, whilst a 
joyful multitude, thinking he was coming to set up 
his temporal kingdom on the throne of David, 
strewed their garments and palm branches in his 
way, and cried aloud: "Hosanna! Blessed be the 
King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the 
Lord. Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. ,, 

From the point of descent of the Mount of 
Olives, over which he was now passing, in a direc- 
tion directly west and across the deep valley of 
Jehoshaphat, appeared the city in all its ancient 
grandeur. He had at one view the whole outline 
of its eastern wall surmounting the brow of the hill, 
and rising some two hundred feet above the valley ; 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUBS. 77 

and above and beyond that, the gorgeous temple, 
covering the whole summit of Mount Moriah, with 
its beautiful eastern gate, its white marble walls, its 
alabaster porticoes and colonnades, its gold-covered 
pinnacles and turrets — all flashing back the morn- 
ing light, and sparkling like "a mountain of snow 
studded with jewels. " On that glorious spectacle, 
the pilgrims of every generation had fixed their 
eyes with devout and admiring wonder, even from 
the days of Solomon. Can we doubt that the Son 
of God now paused to gaze upon such a scene of 
loveliness ? 

" There stood Jerusalem. How fair she looked, 
The silver sun on all her palaces, 
And her fair daughters 'mid the golden spires, 
Tending their terrace flowers, and Kedron's stream 
Lacing the meadows with its silver band, 
And breathing its mist mantle on the sky 
"With the morn's exhalations. There she stood, 
Jerusalem, the city of his love, 
Chosen from all the earth ; Jerusalem, 
That knew him not, and had rejected him ; 
Jerusalem for whom he came to die." 

And how was Jesus affected by all this scene of 
external magnificence — the chosen seat of God's 
favoured covenant people ? He wept over it. He 
mingled his tears of pity with prophetic warnings 
of its approaching doom. The sacred writer tells 
us that " when he was come near he beheld the city 
and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, 
even thou, at least, in this thy day, the things which 
7* 



78 THE BEAUTY OF IMMAXUEL. 

belong unto thy peace ! But now they are hid from 
thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, 
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 
side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and 
thy children within thee ; and they shall not leave 
in thee one stone upon another ; because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation.'' 

Here again, as in so many other instances, we 
behold the mysterious blending of all his Divine 
and human attributes. While all the deep fountains 
of Divine and human love are moved within him ; 
while the warm tears of humanity stream from his 
eyes, as he thinks of the hapless fate of the incor- 
rigible but beloved city, with all the consciousness 
of Divine power, and with a perfect foresight of all 
the sad future, he pronounces its terrible doom. 
And what a contrast between this deep and solitary 
sorrow of the Son of God, and the enthusiastic joy 
of the multitude which surrounds him ! How ut- 
terly unlike every other king and conqueror in the 
world's history, when borne along in triumphal pro- 
cession, amid the shouts and hosannas of an ap- 
plauding and rejoicing people ! " And when he was 
come nigh, even now at the descent of the Mount 
of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples be- 
gan to rejoice and praise God, with a loud voice, for 
all the mighty works they had seen." 

But Jesus wept — wept alone : for, at that moment 
of universal joy around him, there was probably not 



HIS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 79 

one human heart in all the throng that could under- 
stand or appreciate his sorrow. He wept not for 
himself, but for others ; not on account of the suf- 
ferings he was so soon to endure, but on account of 
the woes of the doomed city, and of this guilty 
world. He wept for the city and the people he had 
come to save ; whom he would have died to save ; to 
whom he had so long preached, and for whom he 
had so often prayed. And now he saw that the day 
of merciful visitation was closing for ever. He came 
unto his own and his own had not received him. 
The harvest was passed ; the summer was ended ; 
and the sinners of Jerusalem, as if about to fore- 
stall the doom of all sinners to the end., of time, 
were not saved. 

" He thought not of the death that he should die, 
He thought not of the thorns he knew must pierce 
His forehead — of the buffet on the cheek — 
The scourge — the mocking homage — the foul scorn. 
Gethsemane stood out beneath his eye, 
Clear in the morning sun. And Golgotha 
Stood bare and desert by the city wall. 
And in its midst to his prophetic eye 
Rose the rough cross, and its keen agonies, 
The nails, the spear, and the insulting sponge, 
The blood and water gushing from his side. 
Aye ! he forgot all this. He only saw 
Jerusalem, the chosen, the loved, the lost; 
He only felt, that for her sake his life 
Was vainly given ; and in his pitying love, 
The sufferings, that would clothe the heavens in black 
Were quite forgotten. Was there ever love 
In earth or heaven like this ?" 



80 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

But we pause. Human language is inadequate 
to delineate the character of Immanuel, even in one 
of its virtues. The inspired writers have recorded 
for us his words, breathing the love of heaven ; they 
have told us of his tears, the outward symbols of 
that love ; and then they have set before us the 
amazing scene of his death, as its highest conceiv- 
able proof and manifestation. Our object has been 
to single out this unparalleled love simply as an il- 
lustration of the manifold virtues or attributes, that 
shone forth, in full-orbed perfection, from the whole 
Divine and human nature of Jesus. We have taken 
this one perfection, because from the nature of the 
case, it had to bear a prominent part in his estate 
of humiliation, and his ministry of mercy in our 
suffering world ; and also because it is one which is 
of the very essence of the gospel which he preached, 
and of the God whom he came to reveal. Love is 
the fulfilling of every law of the gospel ; and God 
himself is love. The perfect love of Jesus may, 
therefore, be taken as the crowning proof and seal 
of all his other virtues. It was impossible that 
there should be such a manifestation of all Divine 
and human sympathies even unto death, without at 
the same time carrying with it the full play of 
every other conceivable perfection. 

Hence we find exhibited in the life of Jesus all 
other virtues — not only an absolute sinless human- 
ity, but a humanity completely radiant with every 
positive excellence which can be conceived of, as 



niS IMMACULATE VIRTUES. 81 

belonging to an incarnate Deity. We behold nt 
every step the character of one who, though living 
among sinners, and at last dying for sinners, and 
tempted in all points like as we are, was yet holy, 
harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. We 
behold not only kindness, courtesy, condescension, 
sympathy, moderation, gentleness, self-denial, pa- 
tience, fortitude, and all those qualities that adorn 
the relationships of human life ; but we behold all 
the higher and nobler attributes of virtue — an in 
flexible justice, an unflinching courage, an undevi- 
ating truthfulness, a steadfast purpose, an uncom- 
promising honour, a genuine devotion, a heroic faith, 
a self-sacrificing zeal, a sublime energy, and an im- 
maculate holiness, such as, even aside from his 
boundless love, never met before in any human cha- 
racter. Each trait was absolutely perfect in itself, 
and absolutely perfect in its combination with all 
the rest. Such a character of moral excellence is 
without a parallel in the annals of mankind. And 
such a character in such a world as this, is a de- 
monstration complete that its possessor was Divine. 



82 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 

In reading the life of our blessed Lord, we must 
not forget that there were reasons which made it 
necessary that his celestial beauty and all his Di- 
vine attributes should be partially concealed from 
men during the whole period of his incarnation. 
The work he came into the world to accomplish was 
essentially a work of suffering and death. His 
condition while performing that work was of neces- 
sity one of deep humiliation, inconsistent with any 
general and overpowering display of Divine glory. 
It was the sun in a state of eclipse. Though he 
was, even while dwelling in mortal clay, the bright- 
ness of the Father's glory and the express image 
of his person, possessing all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily, yet that glory was under a cloud, 
hidden, not only from the world, but, in great 
measure, from his most intimate friends and disci- 
ples. In view of this low estate we find Isaiah 
foretelling that he would be despised and rejected 
of men, an object of astonishment and offence to 
many, because his visage was so marred more than 
any man, and his form more than the sons of men. 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 83 

"• For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, 
and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form 
nor comeliness ; and when we shall see him there is 
no beauty that we should desire him." 

But, notwithstanding this deep humiliation and 
hiding of his power, we find, both in Isaiah and 
other prophets, indications that even in the days of 
his flesh, there should break forth many signal dis- 
plays of his Divine glory and beauty. The sun 
must, indeed, be hidden, but it was not to be a total 
eclipse. Isaiah speaks of him as " the Branch of 
the Lord, beautiful and glorious ;" " Thine eyes 
shall see the King in his beauty," and David, 
drawing aside that veil of suffering which so con- 
cealed his glory from mortal view, exclaims, " Thy 
people shall be willing in the day of thy power ; in 
the beauties of holiness from the womb of the 
morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth." 

Accordingly we find the life of Jesus Christ, as 
related by the evangelists, everywhere in exact cor- 
respondence with this two-fold prophetical repre- 
sentation of his humiliation and his glory. For, 
while there hangs over his whole mortal career, from 
the manger to the cross, that eclipse of Divine 
glories which so well befitted a suffering Messiah, 
there were not wanting, even at the darkest hour, 
bright glimpses of celestial light, indicating that 
the darkness must soon pass, and the sun rise again 
triumphant in his meridian splendor. Over and 
above all his miracles and mighty works, there were 



84 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

other manifestations of his glory — indications of a 
supernatural order, given to him from the Father— 
at once tokens to him of his Father's approving 
love, and proofs to his disciples that he was the be- 
loved Son of God. 

These, from the very nature of the case, had to 
be given as occasional manifestations, or exceptions 
from the general tenor of our Saviour's life. For 
it is obvious that, had they occurred so frequently 
as to become the rule, and not the exception, during 
his incarnation, they must have defeated the great 
work of suffering and death, which could be per- 
formed only in an estate of humiliation. And so 
we find that, unlike all the ordinary transactions 
and events of his life, these occasional manifesta- 
tions of supernatural power and glory were, for the 
most part, witnessed by but a few chosen spectators. 
When he suffered and died, the world looked on the 
spectacle. Thousands of human eyes gazed on the 
helpless sufferer. But no man saw him rise from 
the dead. That glory was reserved for the angels 
alone. All his appearances after his resurrection, 
during the forty days preceding his ascension, as 
belonging, properly, to his estate of exaltation, 
took place in the presence of his disciples alone, 
varying in number from one to above five hundred. 
That last and most glorious act of all, when he as- 
cended up on high, must have been witnessed by a 
comparatively small number. And so all the 
brightest manifestations of his glory, prior to his 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 85 

resurrection, were not given to the world at large, 
but to a few spectators. When an angel was sent 
from heaven to announce his advent, and that of his 
forerunner, in the one case Zacharias, and in the 
other Mary, were the sole recipients of the message. 
When at his Lirth a multitude of angels sang Glory 
to God in the highest; peace on earth, good will to 
men, a few shepherds at Bethlehem were all that 
heard the song. When his star appeared in the 
east, and hovered over his manger, though many may 
have seen it, yet none Lut a few wise men seem to 
have understood its peculiar glory. When angels 
descended and ministered to him at the end of his 
temptations in the wilderness, we are told that he 
was alone with the wild Leasts. No mortal saw his 
heavenly visitants. In the awful hour of his agony 
in the garden of Gethsemane, when he had with- 
drawn from the presence of the disciples to pray 
alone, there appeared unto him an angel from 
heaven, strengthening him. But all these signs of 
power were hidden from the world. 

In two instances, recorded Ly the evangelists, 
there seem to have Leen multitudes present to wit- 
ness these extraordinary manifestations of his glory. 
The one was at his Laptism, when the heavens were 
opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God de- 
scending like a dove and lighting upon him. And 
lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my Leloved 
Son in whom I am well pleased. The other was on 
a suLsequent occasion, during his last days, in the 
8 



86 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

temple at Jerusalem, when in answer to his prayer, 
" Father, glorify thy name," there came a voice 
from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it, and 
will glorify it again. " We cannot tell what number 
of people saw and heard these two supernatural 
manifestations of his glory. But on another still 
more remarkable occasion, that of his transfiguration 
on the Mount, we know that only three chosen dis- 
ciples were present with Moses and Elias, to behold 
his glory, and that these were charged not to make 
it known till he should have risen from the dead ; 
thereby showing that this and similar revelations 
belonged not properly to his mortal life, but to his 
risen and exalted state. 

The transfiguration, which is so fully recorded by 
three of the evangelists, and referred to by the 
Apostle Peter in his second epistle, is indeed one 
of the most wonderful and significant transactions 
in our Saviour's history, and deserves a special con- 
sideration. It may be taken as the type or expo- 
nent of all those extraordinary manifestations of 
his glory, which seem to have been granted from 
time to time, as a sort of pledge or earnest of the 
future, in order to relieve the darkness and offset 
the deep humiliation of his incarnate mortal life. 
St. Peter evidently lays peculiar stress upon this 
transfiguration, when, writing long after its occur- 
rence, he says, "We have not followed cunningly 
devised fables, when we made known unto you the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLOKV. 87 

were eye witnesses of his majesty. For he received 
from God the Father honour and glory, when there 
came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, 
" This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased. And this voice which came from heaven 
we heard, when we were with him in the holy 
Mount." The Apostle John probably refers to this 
event, when he says, " The Word was made flesh 
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the 
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth. " It is also worthy of notice, 
that in describing his sublime vision of the Saviour 
in the opening chapter of the Apocalypse, where he 
appears in glory as the Alpha and Omega, the First 
and the Last, this apostle uses language similar to 
that in which the transfiguration is described: 
" His head and his hairs were white like wool, as 
white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of 
fire ; and his countenance as the sun shining in his 
strength." 

But let us turn to the account of the transfigura- 
tion as recorded by Matthew. " After six days 
Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, 
and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart ; 
and was transfigured before them : and his face did 
shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the 
light." Luke adds, that he went up to pray, and 
that as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance 
was altered, and his raiment became white and glist- 
ening. "And behold, there appeared unto them 



88 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Moses and Elias talking with him." Luke again 
adds the subject of discourse, " who appeared in glory 
and spake of his decease wdiich he should accom- 
plish at Jerusalem. " " Then answered Peter, and 
said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here ; 
if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles ; 
one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias :" 
as Luke adds, not knowing what he said. " While 
he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed 
them ; and behold a voice out of the cloud, which 
said, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased ; hear ye him. And when the disciples 
heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore 
afraid/ ' Luke says, they feared as they entered 
into the cloud. " And Jesus came and touched 
them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And 
when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no 
man save Jesus only. And as they came down 
from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, 
Tell the vision to no man until the Son of man be 
risen again from the dead." Mark tells us that 
they kept that saying with themselves, questioning 
one with another, what the rising from the dead should 
mean ; and he further adds, that all the people, 
when they beheld him as he came down from the 
mount, were greatly amazed, and running to him, 
saluted him. From this it would seem, that, as in 
the case of Moses on a similar occasion, some ves- 
tiges of the excellent glory still lingered about his 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 80 

person, and inspired the multitude with wonder and 
adoration. 

The first thing claiming attention in this account 
of the transfiguration is the time of its occurrence. 
It was six days after our Saviour's most emphatic 
declaration to his disciples that he must suffer death 
at Jerusalem. In the vicinity of Csesarea Philippi, 
while conversing with the disciples about his Mes~ 
siahship, he had received from Peter that good and 
strong confession, Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God, which led him to say, Thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
"From that time forth," we are told, "began Jesus 
to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto 
Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and 
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be 
raised again the third day." This was in the last 
year of his public ministry, and probably about nine 
months before his death. As the disciples could 
neither comprehend the mystery of his resurrection, 
nor see the necessity for his death, one object of 
the transfiguration was evidently to impress their 
minds with the certainty of these great facts. 
Peter had, in his ardent zeal, even ventured to re- 
buke him, for thus speaking of a speedy and violent 
death. But he rebukes the disciple in turn, and 
takes occasion to utter some of the most weighty 
and fundamental truths of his gospel, saying, as no 
mortal man had ever said before, " If any man will 



90 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

come after me, let him deny himself and take up 
his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save 
his life, shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life 
for my sake, shall find it. For what is a man pro- 
fited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his soul ? For the Son of man shall come in the 
glory of his Father with his angels, and then he - 
shall reward every man according to his works. 
Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing 
here, which shall not taste of death, till they see 
the Son of man coming in his kingdom." 

In immediate connection with these sublime utter- 
ances, in each of the three evangelists, stands the 
record of his transfiguration. There can be no 
doubt, that as a manifestation of his celestial glory, 
and as a type and symbol of that eternal kingdom 
of which he had just spoken, and in the full glory 
of which he should come at the last day, this trans- 
figuration was in his mind as the first and immediate 
fulfilment of the prediction. "There be some stand- 
ing here who shall not taste of death till they see 
the Son of man coming in his kingdom." For this 
being a demonstration from heaven of his eternal 
power and Godhead — the very prelude, pledge, and 
proof of his final and glorious appearing, might well 
be regarded by those who saw it, as the coming of 
his kingdom. Indeed we know that the apostle 
Peter did so regard it ; for he says, " We have not 
followed cunningly devised fables, when we made 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 91 

known unto you the power and coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.' ' 

From these and other circumstances attending 
the transfiguration, it is easy to see what was its 
great design. To the three disciples who witnessed 
it, it was evidently intended to be a sublime and 
prophetic representation of Immanuel in his glory 
— that glory which he had before he came into the 
world, which he now wears in heaven, and in which 
he will come at last to judge the world. It was in- 
tended for the confirmation of their faith, and, when 
the seal of secrecy should be removed, to be a source 
of instruction and consolation to his church through 
all ages. To the Saviour himself it probably had 
another and still higher significance. Like the 
presence of ministering angels in his hours of trial 
and agony, and like other celestial attestations, 
which he received from time to time, it no doubt 
had the great purpose of sustaining his own faith, 
and of preparing him for the great sacrifice which 
he was to make at Jerusalem. The well-beloved 
Son of God was not to be left entirely alone even in his 
deep humiliation. He needed, and from time to time, 
he received these high tokens of the Father's love, and 
these prelibations of the glory which awaited him 
when his work should have been accomplished. 

It is interesting to notice in this scene the im- 
portant agency of prayer. One evangelist tells us 
that he went up into the mount to pray ; and that 
as he prayed the fashion of his countenance w r as 



92 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

changed. Whsrt honour does the Son of God place 
upon prayer in thus using it in all the great trans- 
actions of his life ! And what honour does the 
Father place upon it, in granting all his most glori- 
ous manifestations in answer to prayer ! At his 
baptism, it was while he prayed, that the heavens 
were opened to him, and the Spirit descended upon 
him, and a voice came from heaven: "This is my 
beloved Son." It was while he was uttering the 
language of prayer, that the same voice was heard 
again in the temple. Before he called Lazarus 
from the grave, he lifted up his eyes to heaven in 
thanksgiving and prayer. And so here, it is prayer 
that opens the heavens on the Mount of transfigura- 
tion, and brings down the glorified messengers. If 
Immanuel found it good to pray, how much more 
ought sinful, helpless men always to pray and not 
to faint ! 

One of the most significant circumstances con- 
nected with the vision, w r as, that Moses and Elias 
should appear. Of all the saints who had lived 
under the Old Testament dispensation, and gone to 
glory, it was most appropriate that these two should 
be manifested on this occasion — Moses as the great 
lawgiver of Israel, and Elijah as the most remark- 
able example and representative of the prophetic 
order. As Christ is the end of the whole legal 
system, and the burden of all the prophets ; as all 
the Scriptures, both of the law and the prophets, 
pointed to his advent; so now r the great lawgiver and 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 93 

the great typal prophet, appear to him in glory, and 
discourse of that death which was to fulfil both the 
law and the prophets. Indeed, it was predicted of 
him, that he should be a prophet like unto Moses, 
and that Elijah should be sent as his immediate 
forerunner to prepare for his coming. And so, 
these two great names, the one opening the Scrip- 
tures of the law, and the other closing those of the 
prophets, by this prediction in Malachi, in a man- 
ner, represent the whole period of preparation, the 
four thousand years before Immanuel's advent; and 
now when the fulness of time had come, they ap- 
pear on the holy Mount to bear witness and homage 
to him as Lord of all. The glorified spirit of the 
prophet, in the same glorified body, which, without 
tasting death, had once been wafted to heaven in a 
chariot of fire and horsemen of fire, comes down to 
the cloud-covered Mount on this new and unusual 
ministry. And the once disembodied spirit of the 
great lawgiver, which had been so long in heaven, 
is now arrayed in a mortal form, prepared for the 
occasion, or else in that very body, raised from the 
dead, which the Lord himself had buried in a valley 
of the land of Moab, where no man knew of his 
sepulchre. In either case, and in both examples, it 
was a sublime and glorious demonstration of the 
great truth of another and higher life for man. 

It was an occasion on which the two worlds 
seemed to meet face to face. Heaven was there, 
represented by these glorified spirits of just men 



94 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

made perfect, who, for ages, had tasted its bliss. 
And earth was there, represented by the three 
apostles in all their frailty, wonderment, and aspira- 
tion after better things. Between them stood Im- 
manuel, clothed now in the nature of both, fit Me- 
diator thus between God and man, and only ladder 
of ascent from the mortal to the immortal. As it 
was a meeting and commingling of the two worlds, 
earth and heaven, brief indeed in its duration, but 
prefiguring one which is to be eternal, so also was it 
a striking representation of the unity of the church 
of God, under all forms and dispensations. Here, 
on a lone mountain summit, apart from every human 
abode, and hidden from the gaze of other men, the 
three disciples have an ocular demonstration of 
Zion's glory in her Great Redeemer. Here is the 
church of the ancient covenant in the person of two 
of his greatest teachers ; representing all those who 
by faith and patience had already inherited the 
promises, and entered into their rest. And here 
was the church of the New Testament, in the person 
of the three apostles, representing all those, to the 
end of time, who, by faith and patience, were yet 
to enter in the church of the fathers and the 
church of the latter days — the church militant and 
the church triumphant — all built upon the founda- 
tion of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself 
being the chief Corner Stone. Truly Immanuel 
was here in his glory, for he was here in the midst 
of his church, the great central object, with whom 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 95 

the immortals converse, and on whom the mortals 
gaze with awe and love. Well might Peter exclaim, 
not knowing, indeed, what to say adequate to such 
a scene, " Lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou 
wilt, let us here make three tabernacles, one for 
thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. " 

But, mark the voice which comes from heaven, as 
the interpreter of this scene, " This is my beloved 
Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." 
There is no more need of earthly tabernacles for 
Moses and Elias. The times of the law, and the 
times of the prophets are passed. There is now a 
greater Lawgiver and a greater Prophet in the 
church below. Henceforth the only earthly taber- 
nacle is that in which Christ resides. The work of 
Moses is done ; the work of Elijah and all the pro- 
phets is done ; but one work remains, that of the 
Son. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased; hear ye him.'' Let him be your Law- 
giver, your Prophet, Priest, and King. 

This whole scene of transfiguration is, therefore, 
a representation of Immanuel's glory in his media- 
torial character, as well as the type and prelude of 
his estate of exaltation when he should rise from 
the dead, ascend to heaven, and come again in the 
clouds of judgment. For, most clearly, we have 
here the manifestation of his character as our great 
High Priest, properly the first of his mediatorial 
offices. The burden of discourse between him and 
the celestial visitors is his work of sacrifice. They 



96 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

spake of the decease which he must accomplish at 
Jerusalem ; and the apostles are charged to tell the 
vision to no man till that work was done. The 
work of sacrifice once ended, and the great High 
Priest having risen again and gone up from the 
valley of humiliation to appear before the throne in 
his exalted state, a Priest for ever after the order 
of Melchisedec — then might this glory be declared 
to men. 

Just as clearly is it a representation of his Pro- 
phetic character. For the apostles, and, through 
them, the church, to the end of time, are com- 
manded to hear him as the great Teacher, the only 
true prophet and lawgiver on earth. Greater than 
Moses, greater than Elijah, he comes as the very 
Prophet of whom Moses had spoken, and whose way 
Elijah had already prepared in the person of John 
the Baptist. This vision reveals him in all the 
glory of the prophetic character because the prophet 
and the lawgiver here meet in one who is the be- 
loved Son of God. 

And so also it is a representation of the Mediator 
in the glory of his royal character. It was to show 
beforehand to a few chosen witnesses who, in due 
time, should bear witness to all the church how he 
would appear in glory when he should come as a 
King, a Conqueror, and a Judge. He had declared 
in the hearing of the multitude, only six days before, 
that the Son of man would come in the glory of his 
Father with his angels, to reward every man accord- 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 97 

ing to his works. And he added, that some were 
present, who should not taste of death, till they 
should see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. 
And here on the mountain, was the declaration 
verified to the three disciples who beheld this mani- 
festation of his power and glory as the King of 
kings and the Lord of lords. 

Altogether it forms one of the most instructive 
scenes in the earthly life of Immanuel. And it is 
full of consolation to all his people. It shows how 
near heaven is to us, even while in this mortal state. 
We are like the other disciples, left below, and 
wholly unconscious of what was transpiring in the 
mount. These heavenly visitors came and went, 
but they knew it not. But if our eyes were open, 
what glorified forms might we not behold in that 
spiritual world which is just above us ! How thin 
too is the veil which intercepts our vision ! It needs 
but death to lift it, and we shall see face to face 
these glorified ones. If Moses and Elias may come 
back into our world, and be made visible to mortal 
eyes, how much easier must be our transition into 
their world! And unto God all things are possible. 
Perhaps we have but to die, to realize how closely 
we had lived on the confines of heaven, and how 
true was the conception, that — 

" Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth, 

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 

9 



98 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

The beloved disciple, when writing the fourth 
Gospel, and quoting from Isaiah to show why the 
Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah, says, " These 
things said Esaias, when he saw his glory and spake 
of him." The glory revealed to the inspired pro- 
phet was that in which he saw the Lord, sitting 
upon a throne high and lifted up, his train filling 
the temple, and the six-winged seraphim crying, 
one to another, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord 
of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." 
This prophetic apocalypse may be regarded as the 
type and prelude of the sublime vision of the trans- 
figuration ; even as the transfiguration is of that 
eternal kingdom and glory in which the Son of 
man shall be revealed at the last day. And so we 
find the transfiguration, with its kindred manifesta- 
tions of Immanuel's glory, holding very much the 
same relation to the evangelical history and to all 
the subsequent revelations of the New Testament, 
which Isaiah's sublime vision held in the prophetic 
history and in the following Old Testament Scrip- 
tures. No doubt the apostles, in many a dark hour 
of toil and tribulation, remembered what they had 
seen and heard in the holy mount ; and felt their 
hearts inspired with new zeal, as they looked for- 
ward to the day when their own bodies should be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body, and they 
should see him face to face. " Beloved, now are 
we the sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS GLORY. 99 

pear what we shall be ; but we know that when 
he shall appear we shall be like him ; for we 
shall see him as he is. And every man that hath 
this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is 
pure/' 



100 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 

The death of Jesus was itself a sublime demon- 
stration of his immaculate virtue. So far as man's 
agency was involved, he died simply because a 
wicked world could not longer bear the presence of 
such virtue. His pure and holy life was a standing 
rebuke to its iniquity. He had committed no 
crime, he had done no wrong, he had spoken no 
treason ; his whole public and private life had been 
a mission of mercy, goodness, and peace ; and he 
boldly challenged the world, in whose open daylight 
all his deeds had been done, to convict him of a 
single sin ; and the world, in a most remarkable 
manner, admitted that he was unimpeachable of any 
crime. The witnesses who appeared against him 
contradicted each other. The man who betrayed 
him acknowledged his innocence, and hung himself 
in remorse for his own crime. The judge who passed 
sentence of death upon him, confessed in the same 
breath that he could find no fault in him. The 
Roman executioner testified at the cross that he was 
a righteous man. The powers in authority at Jeru- 
salem knew that for envy alone he had been be- 



HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 101 

trayed and delivered up ; and all the people from 
Dan to Beersheba knew, that his miracles had been 
miracles of mercy ; his words, only words of truth 
and wisdom ; and all his acts, acts of peace and 
love. And yet the world crucified him — crucified 
him just because it could no longer stand the re- 
proving presence of his immaculate purity. 

That such a man should have died such a death 
of cruelty and shame, in a civilized and enlightened 
age, can admit of no other explanation, when we 
leave out of view all the higher and Divine purposes, 
than that man was depraved, and he was holy. He 
had spoken to the guilty conscience of a world 
lying in wickedness as never man spake before. 
His heart-searching discourses had penetrated the 
inmost depths of its iniquity. He had proclaimed 
the wrath of God against all unrighteousness, and 
had exposed the hollow-hearted hypocrisy of the 
proud in the clear light of heaven's truth. With 
such convincing demonstration did he speak to the 
heart and conscience of his guilty countrymen, that 
they could give his doctrines no answer except that 
which, as they thought, should silence his voice for 
ever. The New Testament is full of examples of 
this heart-searching power of his preaching. The 
whole world is, to this day, full of witnesses, both 
among the good and the bad, of the same thing. 
His words do still cleave their way to the inmost 
convictions of every living and dying man, as no 
other words ever did, or can. Many others since 
9* 



102 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

his day have, like him, reasoned of righteousness, 
temperance, and a judgment to come, so as to make 
the wicked tremble on the very throne of power. 
But these have done it in his name, and in virtue 
of his authority and example. 

It was for his fidelity, therefore, to truth and 
righteousness, that is, for his doctrines and his 
virtues, that the world put him to death. " The 
world cannot hate you," said he; "but me it hateth 
because I testify of it, that the works thereof are 
evil.' , And this unceasing testimony he had given 
both by his words and his virtues. His holy doc- 
trines reproved its thousand falsehoods ; and his 
holy life condemned its deep and dark depravity. 
As Socrates, at Athens, centuries before, had suf- 
fered death without a crime, save that his doctrines 
and his virtues rendered him obnoxious to his fellow 
citizens ; so our blessed Lord at Jerusalem, by a 
similar mode of treatment, but on an infinitely 
higher field of truth and virtue, was rejected, be- 
trayed, and crucified by those who could lay no sin 
to his charge. 

But this would be to look at the death of Jesus 
from the human side alone; and to account for it 
on the low ground of a depraved human agency. 
Many noble martyrs have died for their opinions 
and their virtues in this degenerate world. It has 
been no uncommon thing thus to die; at least since 
his death. This, however, would give us no satis- 
factory reason for his death, looking at it from the 



HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 103 

side of his Divinity. This alone could never account 
for the occurrence of such a death as a part of the 
great unfolding scheme of Providence, and of the 
world's redemption. There is an infinitely higher 
solution. There was an infinitely grander agency 
at work. Wicked men committed the awful deed ; 
but God permitted and ordained the great event, 
for the accomplishment of his eternal purposes of 
mercy to our ruined race. The Apostle Peter gave 
the great reason on the day of Pentecost : " Him 
being delivered, by the determinate counsel and 
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked 
hands have crucified and slain." It was no mere 
martyr's death he died — no patriot's immolation for 
his country's good — no grand moral spectacle to the 
universe, of virtue suffering wrongfully for virtue's 
sake. Whatever there was of this nature in it was 
the least part of it. This was merely incidental to 
it, and not the chief end and object of it. But it 
was as a sacrifice for sin — not his own but the sins 
of others — that Jesus died. It was as the incarnate 
Son of God, man's Surety, and the Mediator be- 
tween God and man, that he died. He died a vi- 
carious death. He died to satisfy the claims of 
God's broken law in behalf of all who believe in 
him, and thus to secure a righteousness for them on 
the ground of which they may be justified and 
saved. He died an atoning death, to make recon- 
ciliation for the sins of his people. For the iniquity 
of his people was he stricken ; for the redemption 



104 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

of sinners through the blood of his cross, was he 
cut off; "He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
sorrows; with his stripes we are healed, and the 
Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Thus 
was it written by the prophets, and thus did it be- 
hove Christ to suffer. The Scriptures do not more 
clearly set before us the great fact of his death, 
than they do the great end and purpose of that 
death. "He hath made him who knew no sin, to be 
sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness 
of God in him." 

He came into the world, therefore, not simply to 
suffer and die with us, but to suffer and die for us — 
to suffer and die for us as no other man ever did, or 
ever can. It was not simply by his example, to 
show us how to suffer and die ; to encourage us in 
suffering and dying ; and to sustain us in such sac- 
rifices. Any other martyr could have done this. 
A thousand others have done it. We are, at all 
times, compassed about by a great cloud of such 
witnesses. But he came to do infinitely more for 
us than this — infinitely more than all the martyrs 
and confessors of all generations could ever do. 
He came to suffer and die for our sins, in the sense 
of paying the awful penalty due to them, bearing 
the curse of the law, atoning for our guilt, and se- 
curing our pardon and justification. He came into 
the world then for the purpose of suffering and dy- 
ing. Thus it became necessary, or behoved him 
to suffer. Unlike all other human lives and deaths 



HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 105 

— his death was not the mere natural end and con- 
sequence of living, but it was the grand, foreseen 
and determinate purpose for which he lived. His 
life was but preparatory to his death, as his death 
was to his resurrection and eternal glory. He be- 
came incarnate, and lived a life of self-denial and 
suffering, in order that he might die the death of a 
vicarious sacrifice for sin. In a word, the great 
work *hich he came into the world to accomplish, 
was a work of suffering and death, and there was 
no way in which it could be finished, except by 
passing through them. 

Hence we find the Scriptures everywhere refer- 
ring our salvation to the death of Christ, the blood 
of Christ, the cross of Christ. It is not that his 
labours, in working out our salvation, were restricted 
to the cross and to the hour of death. His whole 
life of spotless obedience to the law of God, formed 
a necessary part of his atoning work. For it be- 
came him to magnify the law and make it honourable, 
as well as to suffer its penalty in the room of those 
who had broken and dishonoured it. But it is be- 
cause the shedding of his blood by the death of the 
cross was the great consummation of all his acts, all 
his sufferings. The labours and the sufferings that 
had gone before, found their climax and completion 
when with his dying breath he said, It is finished. 
So that from that moment, the cross became the 
very symbol and formula of all that Jesus did and 
suffered in the flesh as our Mediator. The great 



106 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

idea of the work of Christ is that of suffering. 
Hence the apostle says to the Hebrews, " It became 
him for whom are all things and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make 
the captain of their salvation perfect through suffer- 
ings. " Hence he said to his disciples, when these 
sufferings were over, " Thus it was necessary, and 
thus it behoved Christ to suffer/ ' So Paul could 
say to the Corinthians, "I determined not to know 
anything among you save Jesus Christ and him 
crucified ;" and to the Galatians, " God forbid that 
I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. ,, Indeed the sufferings of Christ, which 
had been for ages the theme of prophecy, from 
David to Isaiah, and from Isaiah to Zechariah, be- 
come in the New Testament the prominent and 
inexhaustible subject of all his apostles. The 
preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the cross. 
For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, 
despising the shame ; and it is through the blood of 
the cross that he hath made peace between God 
and man, and reconciled all things unto himself, 
whether they be things in earth or things in 
heaven. 

It is true that our Saviour's life had something 
of joy as well as suffering. No holy heart, however 
oppressed and burdened with others' woes, can be 
utterly without joy. It can glory even in tribula- 
tions ; it can rejoice in conscious innocence and in 
a sense of God's favour amid its very tears. So in 



HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 107 

his suffering and sorrowful life there were some 
gleams of bright, celestial joy, notwithstanding the 
dark eclipse which necessarily excluded his Divine 
nature from mortal view. There were times when 
Jesus rejoiced in Spirit and said, "I thank thee, 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
hast revealed them unto babes : even so, Father, 
for so it seemed good in thy sight." 

Still the predominant feature, both of his life 
and of his death, that is, of the whole period of 
his humiliation from the manger to the cross, was 
suffering, self-denial, sacrifice. It is not possible 
for any human mind to know, or even to conjecture, 
all that a holy being, constituted as he was and dy- 
ing the death he died, must have endured in the 
way of suffering. Nevertheless, with the sacred 
narrative before us, we may get some idea of it, by 
considering carefully some of the many elements 
which made up that bitter cup. And to do this we 
must take into account those which preceded as well 
as those which attended his dying hours. 

The first element of his sufferings was the deep 
poverty and privation of his life. This began in 
the manger of Bethlehem, and it followed him to 
the tomb. " Ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ," says an apostle, u that whereas he w T asrich, 
yet for our sakes he became poor." Being originally 
"in the form of God, and counting it no robbery to 
be equal with God, he made himself of no reputa- 



108 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

tion, and took upon him the form of a servant, and 
was found in the likeness of men." He emptied 
himself of all his titles, all his honours, all his riches, 
and became a man of poverty, who had not where 
to lay his head while living, and in death was buried 
in the tomb of his friend. Though Lord of all, 
and rightful possessor of the riches of the universe, 
he yet on earth toiled for his daily bread till his 
public ministry began, and during that ministry was 
supplied from day to day in a manner that could 
not be unattended with hardship and want. What- 
ever degree of mental or of physical suffering may 
be conceived of as attending this voluntary surren- 
der of all the bliss of heaven, and all the comforts 
of earth, for a life of extreme dependence and of 
pinching penury, may well be regarded as forming 
at least one of the ingredients of that bitter cup, 
which our blessed Lord had to drink. With what 
sadness, with what tenderness, and yet with what 
uncomplaining submission does he say, " The foxes 
have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but 
the Son of man hath not where to lay his head t" 

The next element was the humiliation and shame 
that in the eyes of an ungodly world attended such 
a life and such a death. " Being found in fashion 
as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient 
unto death, even the death of the cross." He was 
despised and rejected by men ; he was despised and 
we esteemed him not. " The reproaches of them 
that reproached thee fell on me." In all his ca- 



IITS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 109 

reer he had to encounter the opposition, the derision, 
the insults of a wicked world. And he had to bear 
it alone. There was none to cheer him, none to 
succour, none to defend his injured character. Con- 
sider him, says an apostle, who endured such con- 
tradiction of sinners against himself. He stood 
and proclaimed the truth of God in the midst of a 
crooked and perverse generation, and at every step 
of his pathway he was watched by malignant foes, 
who were plotting his destruction, and doing every 
thing in their powder to blacken and blast his char- 
acter. For three years he bore this cross, despising 
the shame. And when at last his hour was come, 
he died amid scenes of mockery and insult, in which 
all that Jew and Gentile, earth and hell could do, 
was done to pour contempt upon his suffering soul. 
Forsaken by his friends, scourged, mocked, crowned 
with thorns by the officers of justice, laughed to 
scorn, taunted, and spit upon by his relentless per- 
secutors, and dragged away faint and bleeding to 
the place of execution ; he is nailed by merciless and 
ruffian hands to the accursed cross of a Roman 
slave, and hung up between two thieves, with every 
possible circumstance of disgrace and torture that 
human ingenuity could invent to heap infamy upon 
its dying victim. 

Another element of his suffering life was its 
ceaseless toil. From the opening of his public min- 
istry till its close in death he never rested. His whole 
life was spent in the tw T o great departments of his 
10 



110 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

labour — healing the maladies of the body, and the 
deeper maladies of the soul. His disciples, at times, 
besought him to rest and to take food. But his an- 
swer was : My meat is to do the will of him that 
sent me, and to finish his work. I must work while 
the day lasts ; the night cometh when no man can 
work. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and 
how am I straitened till it be accomplished ? The 
zeal of thine house hath consumed me. Hence we 
find him everywhere thronged by the vast multi- 
tudes that had come to be healed, and to hear his 
preaching. He went about doing good, preaching 
in all the cities and villages, instructing all who 
came to him, attending upon all the great festivals 
at Jerusalem ; and the probability is strong, that 
during the few years of his public ministry, all his 
cotemporaries both in Judea and Galilee, as well as 
strangers from all parts of the w r orld, had heard bis 
matchless instructions and seen his mighty works. 
Never was there on earth a more active, self-de- 
voted, and laborious life. His days were consumed 
in toil, and whole nights in prayer to God 

" Cold mountains and the midnight air 
Witnessed the fervour of his prayer, 
The deserts his temptations knew, 
His conflicts and his victory too." 

Another bitter ingredient in his cup of suffering, 
was that mysterious agony which oppressed him in 
immediate view of the cross. In the garden of 



HIS BUFFERINGS AND DEATH. Ill 

Gethsemane, on the night of his betrayal, before a 
single pang of death had come, there was an awful 
crushing weight of woe upon his holy soul, which 
seemed to fill him with an unearthly and unutter- 
able sorrow, and caused his bodily frame to sweat 
drops of blood. This mental anguish, the fit expo- 
nent of that load of imputed guilt which he was 
bearing for a lost world, and which revealed its 
power so fully in the garden, was not indeed lim- 
ited to that dark hour. It had, doubtless, been his 
daily and nightly companion long before, and during 
all his ministry. Omniscient as he was, and fore- 
seeing the end from the beginning, with all the vivid 
distinctness that w T e perceive present or past events, 
the w T hole scene of death w T as ever present to his 
thoughts; and it is impossible that he should not 
often, especially when alone, have suffered the same 
agony that oppressed him in the garden. For 
during all his life, as well as on "the cross, he bore 
our griefs and carried our sorrows, because the Lord 
had laid on him the iniquity of us all. On the mount 
of transfiguration he had talked with Moses and 
Elias of that decease which he should accomplish 
at Jerusalem ; and we have the record of many dif- 
ferent occasions on w 7 hich he had plainly told his 
disciples, that he must go up to Jerusalem, to be 
betrayed by the rulers, delivered to the Gentiles, 
and crucified. All this long anticipated and new 
sorrow of the soul, in immediate foresight of death, 
and under the infliction of Divine w T rath against the 



112 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

sinner's substitute, comes upon him in the garden 
and at the deepest gloom of midnight. And he 
has to bear it alone, unsupported and uncheered, 
save as he is strengthened for the trial by the min- 
istering angels of God. The world, for which he is 
about to die, is asleep ; his disciples, the companions 
of his three years' toils, are all heavy with sleep. 
Jerusalem, the city of his love, is profoundly asleep, 
all save those murderous bands that are moving at 
this lone hour towards his place of sorrow. And 
there he is in the garden's deepest shade, in the 
midst of his sleeping disciples, prostrate on the 
ground, sweating, as it were, great drops of blood 
falling down to the ground, now breaking the silence 
with the cry, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful even 
unto death," and now with the thrice offered prayer 
to the Father, " If it be possible let this cup pass 
from me ; nevertheless not my will but thine be 
be done." Here was sorrow, here was suffering 
such as mortal heart had never felt — such as no fin- 
ite mind can fully fathom. 

" It was a dark and fearful hour, 

The stars might well grow dim, 
"When this mortality had power 

So to o'ershadow him ; 
That he who gave man's breath might know 
The very depths of human woe." 

The next element to be noticed in our Saviour's 
sufferings was the physical torture of his crucifixion. 
Outside of the dungeons of a Roman Catholic In- 



HIS BUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 118 

quisition, rhcre lias probably never been devised by 
man, a mode of death more dreadful and excruciat- 
ing than that of the cross. Indeed the intenscst 
torture both of body and mind, we are accustomed 
to describe by this very term, excruciating, which 
is derived from the cross. But in our Saviour's 
case, besides all the common and inevitable horrors 
of such a death — its ignominy, its laceration of the 
flesh, its exhaustion, its thirst, its lingering agony 
— there was added every thing in the way of in- 
sult, derision, and cruel torture which a diabolical 
rage could invent to augment his sufferings. To 
such an extent was this carried, that the insane ma- 
lignity of his foes defeated itself, and brought on a 
premature and unexpected sinking of his vital pow- 
ers. So that the scene of torture, which in ordi- 
nary cases, was protracted through several days, 
was terminated in his case by death in a few hours. 
In the fresh vigour of health and in the strength of 
manhood, he is arrested at dead of night, brought 
to trial with the early dawn, hurried before the bar 
of the Sanhedrim, then before Pilate's bar, then be- 
fore Herod and his men of war, and then back to 
Pilate, and then again through the streets of the 
city to the hill of death, bearing his cross ; and 
through all these scenes he is so maltreated, by 
being scourged with rods, smitten on the head, 
pierced with a crown of thorns, reviled and spit 
upon, that when at last exhausted with fatigue, and 
faint with loss of blood, he is nailed to the cross, 
10* 



114 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

his poor crushed nature yields to the load of agony, 
and he expires in from three to six hours. The 
probability is that it was the shorter period, for 
while the evangelists vary as to the beginning of* 
this dread drama, some speaking of the sixth hour, 
and some of the third, they agree that there was 
darkness over all the land from the sixth to the 
ninth hour ; so that we have reason to think, our 
blessed Lord was nailed to the cross about the sixth 
hour or mid-day, and expired about the ninth hour, 
near the time of the evening sacrifice, and thus suf- 
fered during the three awful hours of this supernat- 
ural darkness. But in either event he suffered all 
that human malignity could inflict in the way of 
torture, and all that was required to extinguish such 
a life. There is no page in human history, no re- 
cord of human sufferings, which recounts a scene 
more calculated to touch the heart by its graphic 
grouping of all that was dreadful in the persecutor, 
with all that was sacred and tender in the sufferer, 
than this story of the passion of our Lord. 

But another still, and probably the bitterest of 
all the ingredients in our Saviour's cup of suffering, 
w r as the hiding of his Father's face in that dread 
hour of agony. While his faint and bleeding body 
was suffering all that it could suffer at the hands of 
man, his pure and holy soul was suffering still more 
under the awful hidings of his Father's face. It 
was something of this kind, no doubt, realized or 
anticipated, that, on the night before, had so over- 



Hlfi SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 115 

powered him, when ho sweat great drops of blood, 

ami said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
unto death." But now, in his extremity, when dis- 
solving nature hangs helpless on the cross, when 
earth and hell have risen in league against him, 
when all human helpers have forsaken him and fled, 
save one trembling disciple and his heart-broken 
mother w T ith her female attendants — now when 
earth's deepest darkness has gathered over his dying 
head, that favour, and love, and fellowship which 
from all eternity he had enjoyed w T ith his Father 
seems to be withdrawn, and the very heavens aro 
turned to WTath. All the waves and billows of 
Divine wrath seem to be passing over his head, and 
he is left alone to struggle w T ith that overwhelming 
despair which, but for him, had been poured for ever 
upon the soul of sinful man. His last words had 
been spoken, his last charges given to his weeping 
mother and the loved disciple, his last promise to 
the penitent thief had been uttered, his last petition 
had been oifered up for his foes : " Father, forgive 
them, they know not what they do;" the raging, 
scoffing multitude around had exhausted all their 
vials of wrath upon him, and now, it seemed that 
nothing remained but to die. But at this awful 
moment there is a loud and bitter cry, as of one 
sinking in despair. "And, at the ninth hour," says 
the evangelist, u Jesus cried with a loud voice, 
saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama, sabacthani ! which is, 
being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ?" 



116 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

And here we may well veil our faces in astonish- 
ment, and hush our lips to silence. No mortal 
tongue may tell of the nature or the extent of that 
suffering which thus in death weighed down the 
Spirit of the Son of God. The Scriptures have 
left it in impenetrable mystery. The human mind 
is incapable of comprehending it. All that we 
know, or perhaps could know in our present state, 
is that he suffered not thus for himself. To his pure 
and holy soul, death itself could have had no ter- 
rors. To him death would have been but the gate 
of endless joy; and instead of this cry of despair, 
there would have been but songs of triumph. It 
was because he was bearing in his body on the 
cross the sins of the whole world, dying the Just 
for the unjust, and receiving into his bosom the 
awful curse of the violated law, which, for the time, 
shut out from his view every ray of the Divine 
favour — it was because he stood in our place and 
died our death, that there was for a season poured 
out upon his devoted and vicarious head the unmiti- 
gated wrath of God against sin. This was the 
burden of his fearful passion. " Thus it was written, 
and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to enter 
into his rest." But this storm of wrath was soon 
passed. And then he said, "It is finished." And 
when he had cried again with aloud voice, "Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit," he bowed his 
head and gave up the ghost. 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 117 



CHAPTER IX. 

HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 

The story of the cross, whilst it is the most 
tragical, is yet the most glorious in the annals of 
history. The sufferer becomes a conqueror, even 
in his death ; because he dies to rise again tri- 
umphant and victorious over all his foes. Where 
the historic record of all other men ends, that of 
Jesus begins with a new and nobler life. With him 
the pangs of death and the three days of imprison- 
ment in the sepulchre were but the door of entrance 
for his glorified humanity, into that sublime and 
exalted estate in which there is no suffering and no 
death for ever. 

It is impossible for us to appreciate fully the 
feelings of his disciples as they passed through the 
sad scenes of his crucifixion. We can never, even 
in imagination, stand under that crushing grief and 
despair which pressed them down, when hope after 
hope departed, and they, at last, beheld the beloved 
Master, on whom all their fondest affections centred, 
expire on the cross. Because we know what they 
did not. We know the end from the beginning. 
We see the cross and the crown together. We read 



118 THE BEAUTY OF IMMA'NUEL. 

the sad story of suffering and woe in the light and 
the joy of his resurrection morning. The rising 
sun of the third day does for us what it could not 
do for them — it throws back a halo of glory which 
gilds the Saviour's tomb, and dispels for us all 
those doubts and fears w T hich had gathered over 
their souls, as the gloom of midnight. Still, with 
the glorious issue full in view, there is a deathless 
pathos to all hearts, in the story of the cross. 
Though we know that the third day morning shall 
be as life from the dead, shall dry up our tears and 
tell of our great deliverer's almighty power, and 
pour again the sweet radiance of hope into the 
broken hearts of his scattered disciples, still there 
is a touching tenderness in the sufferings of Jesus, 
which the millions yet to come, as the millions who 
have gone before, can read of only with tearful 
eyes. 

No doubt, some of his disciples cherished a hope, 
even to the last, that his life would be spared; that 
in some way he would exert his mighty power, even 
on the cross, to the confusion and overthrow of all 
his enemies. Judas himself, probably, had some 
idea of this sort when he betrayed him ; and this 
may have been one reason why the traitor was so 
overwhelmed when he saw that instead of being de- 
livered by his miraculous powers, he was actually 
sentenced and led out to death. Though the guilty 
traitor had, in despair, hung himself, we cannot 
suppose that his faithful and loving disciples could 






HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 119 

have lost all hope of deliverance, so long as life lin- 
gered in the sufferer. Scattered and dismayed as 
they all were by the rude midnight arrest of their 
Master, some of them, nevertheless, had gathered 
sufficient courage and hope to follow him through 
all the scenes of the trial, and to the very place of 
execution. Wherever they may have stood among 
the crowd, near by or distant from the cross, in 
silence and fear, watching every shifting scene of 
the dreadful tragedy, it could not be otherwise than 
that they should have prayed, and expected, even to 
the last moment, that he would come down from the 
cross. Because they had for three years seen too 
many manifestations of his Divine power, not to 
know that with him nothing was impossible. He 
saved others, even after death had done its work ; 
and why might he not save himself from the ap- 
proach of death ? 

But when they saw him die, apparently before 
the usual time of death by crucifixion ; when, after 
three hours of supernatural darkness veiling the 
hill of death, and three hours of unparalleled suf- 
ferings, they heard his last words, " Father, into thy 
hands I commend my spirit," and saw him bow his 
head and give up the ghost — as they gazed in help- 
less agony upon the pale, still form of their beloved 
Lord, every ray of hope must have departed from 
their stricken hearts, and they were left in utter 
desolation. They thought it had been he who should 



120 THE BEAUTY OF EMMANUEL. 

have redeemed Israel. But they could think so no 
longer now! 

As the sun of that awful day went down thus in 
darkness and blood, all their hopes of earthly, and, 
perhaps, of celestial glory, went down w ; th it. 
What a night was that in Jerusalem ! What a night 
to Peter and John ! to Lazarus and his sisters ! to 
Mary Magdalene and his own heart-broken mother! 
As they met one another that night or the next 
Sabbath day, and ventured to recount the scenes of 
trial and death they had witnessed, to tell of his 
last w T ords, his last looks, and his dying agony, how 
their hearts must have sunk at the sorrowful recital ! 
The Scripture is silent as to all that they did, said, 
and suffered during this period. All that we know 
about their feelings we learn from the record of 
Luke, that "many beholding the things that were 
done, smote their breasts and returned ;" and from 
the words of Jesus to two of them after he was risen, 
" What manner of communications are these that ye 
have, one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?" 
But that they cherished his memory with an intense 
and undying affection, we may safely infer, not only 
from the honourable burial he received at the hands 
of Joseph and Nicodemus, and the costly prepara- 
tions of the women for embalming his body, but 
from all the incidents connected w T ith the amazing 
scenes of the resurrection, the forty days' sojourn 
with them, and his glorious ascension to heaven. 

Though our Saviour had repeatedly foretold the 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 121 

manner of his death, and declared plainly to his 
disciples that he would rise again the third day, still 
the scenes of his trial and crucifixion were so ex- 
traordinary and overwhelming, that they seem to 
have obliterated all thought or expectation of this 
kind, as effectually as if he had never spoken a 
syllable on the subject. While his enemies remem- 
bered these predictions, and resorted to all possible 
safeguards against being imposed upon by his 
friends, there is no indication that in all Jerusalem 
he had a single disciple or friend who once thought 
of his rising again. The loving women, who, if any 
on earth, would have clung to such a hope, instead 
of thinking of a resurrection, went at the appointed 
hour to the grave to embalm his dead body. And 
so far was such a thought from their minds, that the 
most ardent of them all, Mary Magdalene, even 
when she saw the stone rolled away from the 
sepulchre, the grave clothes lying alone, and two 
angels sitting on the spot where the body had lain, 
still inquired of him, whom she supposed the 
gardener, where he had borne away the dead body. 
Indeed, as if to account for that strange forgetful- 
ness of his predictions, and slowness of heart to be- 
lieve, which had taken possession of their minds, 
the sacred writers tell us expressly that his disciples 
did not understand the Scripture that he should rise 
again. 

Under these circumstances, how convincing must 
have been the proof which overcame this reluctance 
11 



122 THE BEAUTY OF EMMANUEL. 

to believe, and how overpowering the joy, when, on 
the third day, the strange tidings got wing, and flew 
from heart to heart, that Jesus was alive again. 
Never, perhaps, in the history of mankind, was 
there a day of such joy to so many desolate hearts, 
as that first day of the week in Jerusalem. The 
accounts given by the evangelists of the whole scene 
— so fragmentary, so full of rapid movements, so 
full even of apparent disorder and confusion, differ- 
ent messengers running in different directions with 
the news, some meeting and some missing each 
other — are in perfect keeping with all that is natural 
on an occasion so marvellous, and so fraught with 
unspeakable joy. There is nothing in all the New 
Testament truer to life and nature, and more con- 
vincing by all its internal evidences, than the man- 
ner in which this story of the resurrection of our 
Lord is told by the different evangelists. If such 
an event had to occur a thousand times over, in pre- 
cisely the same, or similar, circumstances, it could 
not occur without producing just such phenomena 
as we find it did produce among the saddened, 
despairing, and yet loving friends of Jesus — first 
the slowness of heart to believe, then the fright and 
bewildered astonishment, then the eager haste to 
spread the tidings before the whole truth was known, 
then the unutterable joy which the great fact in- 
spired, and then some appearance of discrepancy in 
the different statements made by the different 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 123 

parties, as they recounted the several different parts 
of the scene. 

It is worthy of remark that there was no human 
spectator of our Lord's resurrection. His disciples 
expected no such event, and were not looking for it. 
It occurred at an hour when Jerusalem was all quiet 
in the slumbers of the early morn. The keepers 
on guard, who were awake, were terrified at the ap- 
parition of angels, and became as dead men. And 
when the women reached the spot, it was only to 
hear the announcement, " He is not here ; he is 
risen as he said ; come see the place where the Lord 
lay." But the stupendous scene was past. While 
men slept, and ere the earthquake had rent the rocks 
and broken the profound stillness of his three days' 
sojourn in the tomb, the conqueror had burst asun- 
der all its bars and risen to life again. Thousands 
had gazed upon him in the deep humiliation of the 
cross. They had witnessed all his agonies ; had 
heard his outcry ; had seen him die ; had followed 
him to the burial. But no mortal eye looked on 
him, as in might and majesty he rose ! In this he 
was seen of angels alone. They were his witnesses. 
They bore testimony of the fact to his unbelieving 
disciples one after another ; and they, in turn, bore 
testimony to an unbelieving world. And thus the 
most wonderful and stupendous event in the history 
of man — the event on which all our hopes of heaven 
depend, was at the first received on testimony, the 
testimony of angels witnessing it, and the testimony 



124 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

of his disciples reporting to others what they had 
heard and seen. 

But the proof was not to end with this testimony. 
Although no human being saw him rise from the 
dead, yet many were permitted to see him, to eon- 
verse with him, to eat with him, after he had risen. 
To see one die and laid in the grave, and then to 
see him alive again, is as perfect an evidence of his 
resurrection as to behold him in the very act of 
rising. And this evidence the apostles had re- 
peatedly, in a great variety of circumstances during 
a period of forty days. In this sense we find on 
different occasions from one to five hundred eye- 
witnesses of his resurrection. Luke tells us, that 
to his chosen apostles he showed himself alive after 
his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of 
them forty days, and speaking of the things per- 
taining to the kingdom of God. We have an ac- 
count of at least ten different occasions on which 
he appeared to some one or more of his disciples, 
during this period. He may have appeared to them 
on many other occasions of which we have no re- 
cord. We know he appeared often enough to con- 
vince the most sceptical and unbelieving among 
them. 

His first appearance was to Mary Magdalene 
alone, early in the morning, immediately after the 
other women had gone back to the city to tell the 
disciples of the vision of angels which they had 
seen at the sepulchre. It is a pleasing and in- 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 125 

structivo fact that this devoted female disciple, 
whose chief distinction was her ardent love, should 
thus be honoured with the first interview with the 
risen Redeemer. The interview was short, but full 
of tender pathos. She stood weeping in the gar- 
den, grieving for the loss of the absent body, for it 
was not in the tomb, and she knew not where they 
had laid it. The living Saviour had already said, 
" Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?" 
But in the intensity of her grief she knew him not. 
He had, however, but to speak her name, Mary, 
probably in that very tone to which she was accus- 
tomed while he was alive, and then she turned and 
said with the full joyous gush of recognition, 
"Rabboni!" which is to say, Master! Jesus saith 
unto her, doubtless for the purpose of turning her 
mind from all mere earthly affections, and making 
her feel that he was no longer an inhabitant of this 
world, " Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended 
to my Father ; but go to my brethren and say unto 
them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, 
and to my God and your God." * 

His second appearance was immediately after this 
to the other women, Joanna, Salome, Mary the 
mother of James and others, as they were on 
their way to the city, when he met them, and 
said, "All hail." And they came and held him 
by the feet and worshipped him. In this embrace 
of his feet there was, no doubt, the homage of be- 
lieving, reverential, and adoring worship; and hence 
11 * 



126 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

he receives and does not forbid it, as he had just 
done in the case of Mary Magdalene, whose first 
gushing emotions of joy had centered upon him 
more as an earthly friend restored, than as a glori- 
fied God and Saviour. Then said Jesus unto them, 
"Be not afraid; (they were still awed by his 
spiritual majesty,) go tell my brethren that they go 
into Galilee, and there shall they see me." 

His third appearance was to Simon Peter, some 
time during this first day of the week ; for in the 
evening of that day, we find, as the two disciples 
returned from Emmaus, that they were greeted at 
Jerusalem with the tidings, " The Lord is risen, in- 
deed, and hath appeared unto Simon." As the 
Apostle Paul in mentioning his different appear- 
ances to the Corinthians, says, "He was seen of 
Cephas, then of the twelve," we naturally infer, 
that on this occasion he appeared to Peter alone, 
and before he had appeared to any of the twelve. 
We have no record, however, of any of the inci- 
dents of this third appearance. The reason why 
♦Peter was singled out from all the other apostles, 
and permitted to see his risen Master first, could 
hardly have been because he had always been a 
sort of leader among his brethren, but is, no doubt, 
to be found in the great grace and condescension 
of our Saviour, who would thus display his loving 
kindness by visiting and reassuring the very disciple 
who had offended most grievously, and was now 
most deeply humble and penitent. If the Lord 






IIIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 127 

had indeed forgiven and appeared to Peter, how 
much more might all the others take courage and be 
comforted ! 

His fourth appearance was on the same day to 
two of those who had believed in him as the Re- 
deemer of Israel, as they journeyed to Emmaus and 
talked together of all that had happened. The 
whole story of this interview, which is given by 
Luke with peculiar minuteness of detail, is full of 
interest, as showing the deep grief and disappoint- 
ment which his sorrowful death had brought upon 
all his friends. Joining himself to them as a stran- 
ger, with interest and sympathy listening to all their 
sad recital of what had just occurred at Jerusalem, 
then himself expounding to them the Messianic 
Scriptures in a way that made their hearts burn 
within them, and at last reaching the village, and 
yielding to their solicitation to tarry with them for 
the night, he reveals himself to them at their even- 
ing meal, in the act of breaking, blessing, and dis- 
tributing the bread. No doubt, in those significant 
and familiar acts, there was something on this occa- 
sion, in his whole tone and manner, which brought 
all the past vividly to their minds, and made them 
see, as though scales had fallen from their eyes, the 
living face of Jesus. With astonishment and joy 
they rose up that hour, and went back to Jerusalem 
to tell the great truth which the women had re- 
ported in the morning, and which till then they had 
doubted, that the Lord had risen indeed. When 



128 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

they reached the city, they found the eleven and 
other disciples gathered together. And then there 
was a mutual announcement of glad tidings. For 
-while the two travellers rehearsed what things were 
done on the way, and how he was revealed to them 
in the breaking of bread, the Jerusalem company 
even anticipated their story with the exultant state- 
ment, " The Lord is risen indeed and hath appeared 
unto Simon." 

Then follows quickly his fifth appearance to this 
assembled company, even as they talked and re- 
joiced together. "And as they thus spake, Jesus 
himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto 
them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified 
and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a 
spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled ? 
and why do thoughts arise in your hearts ? Behold 
my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle 
me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as 
ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, 
he showed them his hands and his feet. And while 
they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said 
unto them, Have ye here any meat ? And they 
gave him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honey- 
comb. And he took it and did eat before them 
[thus giving the most palpable proof that he was a 
living man]. And he said unto them, These are the 
words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with 
you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were 
written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, 



HIS BESUEEECTION AND ASCENSION. 129 

and in the psalms concerning me. Then opened he 
their understanding that they might understand the 
Scriptures. And he said unto them, Thus it is writ- 
ten, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise 
from the dead the third day ; and that repentance 
and remission of sins should be preached in his 
name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. 
And ye are witnesses of these things. And behold 
I send the promise of my Father upon you ; but 
tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued 
with power from on high. ,, 

These five appearances w r ere all on the first day 
of the week, the first Christian Sabbath. His sixth 
appearance was on the Sabbath following, or eight 
days after, to the eleven disciples including Thomas. 
Thomas had not been present at the former inter- 
view. When the others reported to him how they 
had seen the Lord, had conversed with him, eaten 
with him, marked the very nail prints on his hands 
and feet, in a spirit of excessive caution and incre- 
dulity he replied, " Except I shall see in his hands the 
print of the nails and put my finger into the print 
of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will 
not believe." Our blessed Lord, more perhaps 
with a view to make the proof of his resurrection 
doubly sure to the doubtful of all coming genera- 
tions, than of yielding to the unreasonable demand 
of this doubting disciple, granted another interview, 
probably in the same room, which removed all the 
doubts of Thomas. " Then came Jesus, the doors 



180 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace 
be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach 
hither thy finger, and behold my hands ; and reach 
hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be 
not faithless but believing. And Thomas answered 
and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus 
saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, 
thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have not 
seen, and yet have believed.' , 

His seventh appearance was on the shore of the 
sea of Galilee, early in the morning, to seven of his 
disciples, who had spent a toilsome and fruitless 
night in fishing. John, who narrates it, calls it the 
third time he had showed himself to his disciples. 
It was indeed only the third time he had appeared 
to any collective body of them, but as we have seen, 
the seventh, from the first, including the four pre- 
ceding interviews, which were only personal, as be- 
ing with one or two individuals. The disciples on 
this occasion were Peter, James, John, Thomas, 
Nathaniel or Bartholomew, and two others, whose 
names are not given. This interview, which is per- 
haps more fully recorded than any other, was ac- 
companied by one of his mighty miracles, bringing 
to their minds other similar displays of Divine 
power while he was with them, and leading them at 
once to know that it was the Lord. On this occa- 
sion he dined with them, and held that memorable 
dialogue with Peter, which seemed intended to rein- 
state him in his forfeited apostleship, and to point 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 131 

out the great duty of the office — " Feed my sheep, 
feed my lambs." 

His eighth appearance was that which he had him- 
self appointed in Galilee. On the night he was 
betrayed, he had said to his disciples, " When I am 
risen I will go before you into Galilee. " On the 
morning of the resurrection the angels sent word to 
his disciples by the women, and he afterwards met 
them and repeated the message, To go and tell his 
brethren to meet him in Galilee. Accordingly after 
the second Sabbath his apostles seem to have left 
Jerusalem and returned to Galilee to wait for his 
appointed appearance. We know not the place 
which he appointed. The Scripture speaks of it as 
a mountain, and tradition makes it the mount of 
transfiguration, on which Peter, James, and John 
had once beheld his excellent glory, when he charged 
them to tell the vision to no man till the Son of 
man should be risen from the dead. It seems very natu- 
ral to suppose that there w r as some sort of connec- 
tion between that first partial revelation of his glory 
to the three disciples, and this fuller manifestation 
to all of them after he was risen from the dead, and 
that the place was the same. But be this as it may, 
there can be no doubt that a great number of his 
disciples and friends, not only from Jerusalem, but 
from all the cities of Galilee had resorted to the 
place of meeting. It is evidently of this interview 
that the apostle Paul speaks, when writing to the 
Corinthians many years afterwards, he says, "After 



132 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at 
once, of whom the greater part remain unto this 
present, but some are fallen asleep." Important 
however as the occasion was, both in its previous 
appointment, and in the numbers who witnessed it, 
it is very briefly recorded. " Then the eleven dis- 
ciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where 
Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw 
him they worshipped him, but some doubted. And 
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All 
power is given to me in heaven and earth.' ' Mat- 
thew, who alone of the evangelists, relates this ap- 
pearance in Galilee, connects with it the words of the 
great commission, " Go ye therefore and teach all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father 
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching 
them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world." And the strong pro- 
bability is that this great command was given on 
more than one occasion — at least on this one, and 
on that in which he ascended to heaven. 

The ninth appearance was to James, as mentioned 
by Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians. 
There is some doubt as to which one of the persons 
bearing the name of James, this was. In all pro- 
bability it was the one whom Paul mentions in his 
epistle to the Galatians as the " brother of the 
Lord," and who was afterwards eminent in the 
church at Jerusalem, and took a leading part in the 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 133 

first synod there, as stated in the fifteenth chapter 
of the Acts. But there is no account given else- 
where of this appearance to James. 

His tenth and last appearance (excepting that in 
which he was afterwards seen by Paul) was on the 
day of his ascension to heaven. A full account of 
this is given by St. Luke, partly in his Gospel and 
partly in the first chapter of the book of Acts. 
It occurred forty days after his resurrection, and 
consequently just ten days before the day of Pen- 
tecost. No doubt the whole band of his apostles, 
having returned from Galilee, were present at the 
last interview. Indeed we read in immediate con- 
nection, that the number of the names of those who 
were together was one hundred and twenty. On 
this occasion he charged them not to depart from 
Jerusalem, but to "wait for the promise of the 
Father, which they had heard of him. For John 
truly baptized with water but ye shall be baptized 
with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence." From 
Luke's narrative we should infer that he spent some 
considerable time with them on this occasion, 
"giving them commandments and speaking to them 
of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." 
As suggested by Dr. Moore, in his admirable little 
work, "The Last Days of Jesus," we think it likely 
that he met his disciples on this occasion, as he had 
done on others, in the evening, in their usual place 
of meeting in Jerusalem, spent the whole night with 
them, and led them out through the early dawn, by 



134 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

the familiar path which they had trodden on the 
night of his betrayal, across the brook Cedron, past 
Gethsemane, and over the Mount of Olives, to his 
loved and quiet Bethany, the chosen spot for his 
ascension. Luke closes his Gospel with the follow- 
ing record : " And he led them out as far as 
Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed 
them. And it came to pass while he blessed them, 
he was parted from them, and carried up into 
heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to 
Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually 
in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. ,, 
In the Acts, he supplements this account with other 
interesting particulars. The disciples ask, "Lord, 
wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to 
Israel ?" He answers, "It is not for you to know 
the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put 
in his own power. But ye shall receive power, 
after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and 
ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, 
and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter- 
most part of the earth." In all probability he ut- 
tered again the solemn words of the great commis- 
sion, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature ; he that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not 
shall be damned. And when he had spoken these 
things, while they beheld, he was taken up ; and a 
cloud received him out of their sight." St. Mark 
adds, " He was received up into heaven and sat on 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 135 

the right hand of God." "And while they looked 
steadfastly toward heaven, (continues St. Luke,) as 
he went up, behold two men stood by them in white 
apparel ; who also said, Ye men of Galilee, w T hy 
stand ye gazing up into heaven ? This same Jesus 
who is taken from you into heaven, shall so come 
in like manner, as ye have seen him go into heaven. 
Then returned they unto Jerusalem, from the Mount 
called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath 
day's journey." 

Truly the Lord hath done all things well ! No- 
thing could be more complete and convincing than 
these proofs of his resurrection, given to so many 
witnesses, in so many varying forms, through the 
space of forty days. Angels saw him rise. But 
men saw him die, saw him buried, saw him alive 
again, and saw him ascend to heaven. There can 
be no possibility of mistake as to either of these 
facts. There is no more ground to doubt that he 
rose from the dead and ascended to heaven than to 
doubt that he lived and died. But if he rose and 
ascended, then all is true, all is sure and safe for 
ever. If he rose and ascended, then is he a Divine 
and Almighty Saviour, exalted at God's right hand 
and living for evermore to intercede for us. If he 
rose and ascended, then was his life an incarnation 
of God in the flesh, and his death a great atoning 
sacrifice for the sins of the lost. If he rose and 
ascended, then is this story of the cross a true 
gospel to a perishing world, the power of God and 



136 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

the wisdom of God to all who believe. If he rose 
and ascended, then is our hope of heaven secure, 
our salvation on the immovable basis of God's truth 
and God's infinite love and mercy. Then was he 
delivered for our offences, and raised again for our 
justification. Made of the seed of David according 
to the flesh, he was thus declared to be the Son of 
God with power by the resurrection from the dead. 
Nothing ever was, and nothing ever can be, more 
sublime and glorious than such a termination of 
such a life, and such a death ! The toils of his suf- 
fering life, the humiliation and agony of his cruel 
death, exchanged for the immortal robes of his re- 
surrection body, and for the bright diadem of a con- 
queror over death and hell, ascending to his eternal 
throne in the heavens. The genius of the old 
classic Greeks and Romans, strove to embody some 
lofty conception of the sublime and beautiful, the 
eternal and divine, in their myths and fables of 
human apotheosis and transformation. But here, 
alone, in Jesus Immanuel, incarnate, crucified, risen, 
ascended, and crowned with glory, we find the only 
true meeting of earth and heaven, the one grand 
transformation of the Divine into the human, and 
apotheosis of the human on the throne of Divinity. 
Here alone, in this wondrous and sublime story, do 
we find man's only possible exaltation and glory. 
We see not yet all things put under man ; for the 
end is not yet. But we see Jesus on the throne ; 
we see Jesus, " who was made a little lower than the 



HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 137 

angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory 
and houour; that he, by the grace of God, should 
taste death for every man." 

The resurrection and ascension were not only a 
demonstration to the universe that his grand work 
of atonement for man by the death of his cross, 
was fully accomplished and accepted in the heavens, 
but a complete and eternal vindication of his cha- 
racter and all his claims as our conquering King 
and Redeemer. It marked the ending of his estate 
of humiliation in the flesh as our atoning sacrifice, 
and the beginning of that estate of exaltation and 
glory, as King of kings and Lord of lords, in which 
he shall reign in heaven and rule on earth, until all 
enemies shall be put under his feet, and death itself 
shall die. It was a fitting spectacle to the attend- 
ant angels, that the whole band of loving disciples, 
as on that memorable morning they stood on the 
mount, and saw him ascend in his chariot of cloud 
to the highest heavens, should, with adoring wonder, 
worship such a Saviour, such a conqueror. It was 
but the prelude of that eternal worship which 
awaited him on high, when the everlasting doors 
were lifted up at his approach, and the decree of 
welcome went forth — "Let all the angels of God 
worship him." 
12* 



138 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



CHAPTER X. 

HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICES AND WORK. 

Among men no character can be fully estimated 
without considering the offices filled and the works 
accomplished by its possessor. It is mainly through 
the works of a life time that the character of any 
man is best displayed. The same rule will apply to 
the life and character of our blessed Lord. Thus 
far we have traced the great facts and events of his 
life, with his Divine and human virtues, through 
their gradual historical development, from the hour 
of his incarnation in human form to that of his as- 
cension to heaven, as our risen and glorified Me- 
diator. And if this were all, it would infinitely 
transcend anything that was ever known among 
men ; but the wondrous story does not end even 
with this sublime apotheosis. As he came from 
heaven at first only to enter upon his work, as he 
passed from life to death only to finish for ever one 
great part of that work, that of sacrifice and expia- 
tion, so he passed from death to life again, and from 
earth to heaven itself, but to carry on and consummate 
his great Mediatorial work. Having done all that 
the case he had undertaken required to be done on 



HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICES AND WORK. 139 

earth, lie is now gone up to appear before God as 
our Advocate, Intercessor, and victorious King, 
there to accomplish all that part of his work which, 
from his ascension to his second coming, remained to 
be done. 

Although exalted on his heavenly throne, he still 
fills his Mediatorial offices, and is carrying on his 
great work, and we, in this mortal state, only see in 
part and know in part what he has done and is yet 
to do ; nevertheless the Scriptures have revealed 
enough to give us some conception of his character 
and achievements as our Prophet, Priest, and King. 
These three great offices pertain to him as Mediator 
between God and man ; and they belong to him 
both in his estate of humiliation and of exaltation. 
For whilst the different offices are, each in turn, 
most prominently brought to view at the several 
successive stages of his work, those of Prophet and 
Priest characterizing his estate of humiliation, the 
one in his life of instruction, and the other in his 
death of sacrifice, and that of King characterizing 
his state of exaltation from the resurrection to the 
consummation of all things ; still all three of them 
were filled by him while in the flesh, and by antici- 
pation for four thousand years before the advent, 
and all three of them are still borne by him, now 
that he is in heaven. As our Great High Priest, 
he finished the work of sacrifice, by the one offering 
of himself upon the cross. But he is still our Great 
High Priest in heaven — " a priest for ever after the 



140 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

order of Melchisedec" — "a priest who ever liveth to 
make intercession for us' ' — " the Lamb slain from the 
foundation of the world." In the days of his earthly 
ministry he was the Prophet, that was to come into 
the world, the great Teacher of Israel, a light to 
lighten the Gentiles, and a preacher of glad tidings 
to the poor. But from the very beginning, through 
all dispensations, he was in the church as the great 
Prophet of all the prophets, teaching his people and 
preparing the way for his incarnation, by revela- 
tions and manifestations to holy men of old who 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. In 
his kingly office, which belongs preeminently to his 
estate of exaltation and glory, as risen from the 
dead and ascended to heaven, he is now seated at 
God's right hand, clothed with all power in heaven 
and earth, conquering all his and our enemies, and 
carrying forward his eternal purposes, until "every 
knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on 
earth and things under the earth, and every tongue 
shall confess that he is Lord of all to the glory of 
God the Father. ,, But still he was our King from 
the beginning of the history of Redemption. In 
the darkest hour of his humiliation, when his God- 
head was all eclipsed in the cloud of mortal flesh, 
and he stood arraigned as a culprit at Pilate's bar, 
he could say, " I am a king, for this end was I born, 
and for this purpose came I into the world, that I 
might bear witness unto the truth." He was with 
his church through all the wilderness, not only as 



i. 



HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICES AND WORK. 141 

her suffering Messiah, but as her all-conquering 
Sovereign — the Prophet of all her prophets, the 
Priest of all her priests, the King of all her kings, 
the rightful Lord of the whole earth. And thus, 
from the beginning to the end, through all dispen- 
sations, both in humiliation and in exaltation, in 
life, in death, and resurrection, on earth and in 
heaven, he executes for the church of his redeemed 
his great Mediatorial work, and fills all the high 
offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, His kingdom 
is an everlasting kingdom, and of his dominion 
there shall be no end, till he shall have consum- 
mated all the purposes of his Mediatorship, shall 
have put down all authority and power, brought all 
his ransomed home to glory, and delivered up the 
kingdom to God ihe Father, that God may be all 
in all. 

If we look back into the history of the ancient 
church, as developed through all the Old Testament 
Scriptures, it is in the light of these three great 
Mediatorial offices filled by the Messiah, that we can 
best understand the types, symbols, ceremonies, and 
revelations of that time of preparation. All spoke 
of Christ, all pointed to Christ as the one Mediator 
and Deliverer of Israel — the Prophet to come, like 
unto Moses, the atoning Priest adumbrated by 
Aaron, the eternal King in Zion sitting on the throne 
of David. He was the burden of all the prophets' 
messages of salvation and deliverance. He was the 
subject of all the inspired bards and psalmists of 



142 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Israel. He was the substance of all the burning 
altars, the bleeding victims and the priestly offer- 
ings and oblations. He was the end of all the laws 
for righteousness to every one that believeth. He 
was the theme of all the Scriptures, that were writ- 
ten in the law, the prophets, and the psalms. It is 
only as the soul of man is taught and enlightened 
by him, as God's appointed Prophet, redeemed from 
sin and hell by him as God's accepted Priest, deliv- 
ered from all enemies by him, as God's equal and 
eternal Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 
that any soul ever was or can be saved. It is only 
thus as he executes those great offices, and in them 
accomplishes the greatest w r ork that was ever un- 
dertaken in the universe, that all the church of 
God, of all nations and generations from the begin- 
ning to the end of time, shall be saved and gathered 
home to glory, washed by his blood, sanctified by 
his Spirit, and redeemed by the might of his power. 
There was in the very nature of the work which 
the Mediator undertook, the work of redemption, 
a necessity that he should discharge each of these 
great offices. The race of man was ruined by sin, 
apostate from God, under the curse of his violated 
law, lost to all the light of heaven, and delivered 
over to the dominion of death. To make reconcili- 
ation for such sinners — lost for ever in the triple 
sense of being in utter darkness, in utter condem- 
nation, and utter bondage to death and the devil, 
there was a threefold work to be done, the work of 



HIS MEDIATORIAL OFJTCKS AND WORK. 143 

instruction, the work of sacrifice, and the work of 
conquering all their enemies. The pall of nature's 
darkness must be lifted from eyes that had been 
hopelessly blinded by sin. The death penalties of 
a violated law must be met and satisfied for those 
who were already under its curse, having forfeited 
every claim to life. The prison-doors of hell and 
the grave must be unbarred by one, who, having in- 
finite righteousness, and having given his own blood 
as a ransom, had almighty power to release the cap- 
tives. Thus it was written, and thus it behoved 
Christ to suffer ; and not only to suffer, but to pour 
the light of Divine truth into every sin-blinded soul, 
and to reign and conquer in behalf of all his re- 
deemed people. It is therefore of the very essence 
of salvation, a matter arising out of the fearful 
exigencies of our condition as sinners, that our 
Mediator Immanuel should be a Prophet, a Priest, 
and a King. The whole history of redemption ex- 
hibits him as such. He could not have been a Sa- 
viour otherwise. In each his work is perfect and 
glorious. He taught with infinite wisdom, as never 
man taught. He died once for all, the victim and 
the priest, the just for the unjust, as neither men 
nor angels could have died. He destroyed Satan's 
throne, and triumphed openly over death and hell, 
as none but a God could do. Not in one jot or tittle 
of all his work did he fail. 

If we look forward into the Apocalypse, the pro- 
phetic book of the New Testament, we behold him, 



144 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

amid all the glories of the heavenly hierarchy, wor- 
shipped and adored; not only for his own infinite 
majesty as the eternal Son of God, but for that 
amazing work of redemption which he had wrought 
out by his blood, carried forward by his Spirit, and 
perfected for ever by his sovereign power as the 
Mediator between God and man. This is indeed 
the sublimest vision of the Apocalypse. This work 
of the Lamb is the theme of the new song. It is 
the most wondrous, the most joyous, and exultant 
theme that the angels had ever heard in heaven. 
" And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art 
worthy to take the book and to open the seals there- 
of ; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to 
God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue 
and people and nation ; and hast made us unto our 
God kings and priests ; and we shall reign on the 
earth. And I beheld, and I heard the voice of 
many angels round about the throne and the living 
creatures and the elders ; and the number of them 
was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands 
of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is 
the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, 
and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, 
and blessing. And every creature which is in the 
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and 
such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, 
heard I saying, Blessing and honour and glory and 
power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, 
and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. ,, 



IILs MEDIATORIAL OFFICES AND WORK. 145 

It is in this work of man's redemption that Im- 
manuel has made the highest manifestation to the 
Universe of the glory of God. Not only does it 
display the infinite loveliness of his own personal 
character, as showing the riches of his grace toward 
perishing man, and the glory of his power and wis- 
dom in his salvation, but it displays, as nothing else 
had ever done or could do, all the grand, essential 
attributes of the Godhead. " These things the 
angels desire to look into;" for these, more than 
all works and ways of God, declare his glorious 
moral character, as the God of infinite justice, in- 
finite holiness, infinite truth, infinite love and 
mercy. 

By this great work of sacrifice, of instruction, 
and of conquest, he has vanquished all the enemies 
of God for ever, has rolled back the night of sin 
and death from the face of God's creation, broken 
Satan's power in the dust, reconquered and re- 
claimed his trophies, and prepared a people for his 
glory in the heavens. On this work he has founded 
his own Mediatorial kingdom, and built his church, 
so that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
This church of the redeemed, founded on the rock 
of ages, in his own person, gathered from every age 
and nation, and intended by him to make known 
unto principalities and powers in heavenly places, 
the manifold wisdom of God — this church is itself 
but the result and exponent of his mighty work. 
And not until the last sinner shall have been saved, 
13 



146 



THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



and the last saint of all earth's teeming millions 
brought home to glory — not until the general as- 
sembly and church of the first born, who are written 
in heaven, shall have met to part no more in his 
presence — not until that day when God shall wipe 
all tears from every face, and these mortal bodies, 
raised from the dust and fashioned like unto his 
glorious body, shall have rejoined their ransomed 
spirits in the skies, shall we ever know all that God 
our Saviour has done for us. 

" Burst, ye emerald gates, and bring 

To my raptured vision, 
All the ecstatic joys that spring 

Eound the bright elysian. 
Hark, the thrilling symphonies 

Seem e'en now to seize us, 
Join we too the holy lays, 

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. 
Sweetest sound in Seraph's song, 
Sweetest note on mortal tongue, 
Sweetest carol ever si»ig, 

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus " 



V. 



HIS SECOND AND GLORIOUS APPEARING. 147 



CHAPTER XI. 

HIS SECOND AND GLORIOUS APPEARING. 

It is a blessed and glorious thought that the Son 
of God is to come back to the earth again — not in 
poverty and humiliation, but in triumph and majesty 
— not as the Lamb slain, but as the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah. "I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, ,, cried the sorrowing patriarch of Uz, "and 
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. 
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, 
yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see 
for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not an- 
other, though my reins be consumed within me." 
The law of compensation reigns through all the 
ways of God. The cross is but the prelude to the 
crown. The death of a good man is but his step- 
ping stone to glory. And so the first advent of the 
Son of God in weakness, and toil, and woe, was but 
the necessary preparation for that second advent in 
which he is to come in all the glory of his Father 
with the holy angels. He shall stand upon Mount 
Zion again, not as he once stood, derided and re- 
jected of men, at Pilate's judgment-seat, but him- 
self the Judge of quick and dead. " This same 



148 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

Jesus," said the angels at his ascension, " who is 
taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like 
manner as ye have seen him go away into heaven." 
" Behold he cometh with clouds," writes the prophet 
of the Apocalypse, " and every eye shall see him, 
and they also that pierced him shall see him, and 
all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." 
One of the earliest prophecies on record, speaks of 
this second and triumphant coming. Enoch, the 
seventh from Adam, said, "Behold, the Lord cometh 
with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judg- 
ment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly 
among them of all their ungodly deeds which they 
have ungodly committed, and of all their hard 
speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against 
him." 

This sublime doctrine of the second coming our 
Saviour had often taught his disciples while he was 
with them: "When the Son of man shall come in 
his glory and all the holy angels with him, then 
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory ; and be- 
fore him shall be gathered all nations ; and he shall 
separate them one from another, as a shepherd 
divideth his sheep from the goats." When ar- 
raigned for trial before the Jewish Sanhedrim, and 
adjured by the high priest, in the name of the living 
God, to tell them whether he was the Christ, the 
Son of God, he answered, "I am; and hereafter 
shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of 



HIS SECOND AND GLORIOUS APPEARING. 149 

heaven." And thus from the time of his ascension 
to heaven, onward through all the Epistles and the 
Apocalypse, we find this grand doctrine of his re- 
turn to earth, held forth prominently, as the great 
prophecy of the New Testament, and the most 
joyful hope of the church. "We look for that 
blessed hope, ,, says Paul, "the glorious appearing 
of the great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ.' ' 

To the Scriptures of the New Testament, and to 
the whole church of the New Dispensation, this 
promise of the second advent, stands related, very 
much as the promise of the first advent stood related 
to the Scriptures and the church of the Old Covenant. 
It is the grand inspiring object of hope. It is the 
bright pledge of final deliverance and redemption 
for all the saints of God. 

Intimately associated with this second coming of 
the Son of God, are many of the grandest revela- 
tions of the Scriptures — the resurrection of the dead, 
the judgment of men and angels, the new heavens 
and the new earth, the final redemption of the 
church, the glory of the righteous, the doom of the 
wicked. All these last great things are dependent 
upon his advent. They belong to him in his ex- 
altation and glory. They are to be executed by 
him in his royal power. To all the universe, they 
will be as full a display of his Divine power, and as 
triumphant a vindication of his right to reign and 
rule, God over all, blessed for ever, as the death of 
the cross had been of the completeness of his work 
13* 



150 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

of humiliation and sacrifice. Here we behold one 
of those amazing contrasts of which the history of 
redemption is so full — the Son of God condemned 
as a man at Pilate's bar, the Son of man vindicated 
as God on his throne of judgment in the clouds. 
If ever, in any case, the end and issue of a story 
justified its beginning and vindicated all the stages 
of its progress, so as to furnish by the very fitness 
and symmetry of all things a demonstration of its 
truth, it is done in the history of Redemption. 
Man in his impotent short-sightedness, looking only 
at the feeble beginnings, and the partial progress 
of this scheme of salvation across the ages, may be 
tempted to write imperfection and failure upon the 
Gospel of God. But let man suspend his judgment 
till the whole case is issued — till the last great 
things are done — till the Man of sorrows and' the 
scenes of Gethsemane give place to the judgment- 
seat of Christ, and the " glory yet to be revealed" 
— till heaven shall compensate for the toils of earth 
and eternity adjust the inequalities of time — and 
he shall then see, that from the beginning to the 
end, in every step of his progress, the Lord hath 
done all things well. 

As the crucifixion fulfilled the prophecies of four 
thousand years ; as the resurrection and ascension 
demonstrated the Divine purpose and significance 
of the crucifixion ; as the descent of the Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost was but the development of 
the great results of the resurrection and ascension ; 



HIS SECOND AND GLORIOUS APPEARING. 151 

as the onward, irresistible progress of the gospel 
among the nations for eighteen centuries, is but the 
carrying out of that Pentecostal beginning, and the 
constantly accumulating vindication of all that has 
gone before ; so the shout of the archangel, the 
trump of God, and the coming of the Son of man 
in the clouds of heaven, attended by the spirits of 
just men made perfect, and all the holy angels, to 
raise the dead, to judge the world in righteousness, 
and to settle all the issues of time in the light of 
eternity, will be but the necessary unfolding and 
completing of that great scheme of Providence and 
grace w T hich began with the first announcement in 
Eden — " The seed of the woman shall bruise the 
serpent's head." The whole progress of the work 
with its crowning day, w r as as fully present to the 
mind of the Lord then, to justify and direct every 
successive revelation of the Bible, as it will be be- 
fore the minds of angels and men at the last day. 

As to the time appointed for the ushering in of 
these last great things, the Scriptures have given us 
no distinct information. We may perhaps under- 
stand something, as to the order of succession in 
which they are to occur, and get some faint concep- 
tion as to their awful grandeur, transcending all 
earthly and mortal scenes ; but the set time is one 
of those secret things, w T hich belong not to us or our 
children, but only to God. It is a great mystery, 
over w r hich the Divine mind seems purposely to have 
thrown the veil of concealment. Many have sought 



152 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

in vain to penetrate that veil ; to see what is behind 
the curtain of the future. From the very days of 
the apostles there have been some in the church, 
-who have striven to fix the time of Christ's appear- 
ing. St. Paul wrote his second letter to the Thessalon- 
ians, in part to correct the error of those who 
taught that the coming of the Lord was then just 
at hand. At many subsequent periods, down to our 
own, the same opinion has been revived ; and some 
have ventured beforehand to tell the year and the 
day when the Son of man should appear. Some 
even now, from their reading of the prophecies, are 
looking with confident assurance to his appearing as 
an event near at hand, to be witnessed by this gen- 
eration. Some suppose that his coming will not be 
until the earth has had its full week of working 
days — a thousand years for a day — to be followed 
by a seventh day of rest, or Millennial Sabbath, of 
a thousand years ; making four thousand years of 
preparation for the first advent, two thousand for 
the second, and one thousand of the latter day glory 
for the end. 

But all such conjectures are fruitless, perhaps 
presumptuous. AVhen on the mount of Olives, the 
disciples came to our Saviour privately, saying, "Tell 
us when shall these things be ; and what shall be 
the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the 
world?" after telling them of many things which 
must first come to pass in all nations, he added, 
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, 



HIS SECOND AND GLOKIOUA APPEARING. 168 

not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." 
And when, Oil the day of hia ascension to heaven, 
they asked, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the 
kingdom to Israel?" he said, "It is not for you to 
know the times and the seasons which the Father 
hath put in his own power. " It would seem, that 
such language as this, even though ^referring to 
other events, ought to deter us from any confident 
assertion as to the time of his second and glorious 
appearing; and also as to the question whether his 
coming shall long precede, or be immediately fol- 
lowed by, the stupendous scenes of the resurrection 
of the dead, the last judgment, and the destruction 
of the world by fire. About scenes so awfully su- 
blime as these, and so unlike any thing that mortal 
eye has gazed upon, and of which the sacred writers 
speak with such reserve, it is certainly rash for us 
to speak with confidence, either as to the time or 
programme of their occurrence. The revelations 
of the Apocalypse on this whole subject, are as yet 
a profound mystery, it may be, reserved for the 
clearer light of ages yet to come, and providences 
yet to be unfolded. The best thing we can do on 
such a subject, is to lay aside all speculation, and 
ponder well the simple, but sublime words of the 
apostles. " If we believe, that Jesus died and rose 
again," says Paul to the Thessalonians, "even so 
them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him. For this we say unto you by the word of the 
Lord) that we who are alive and remain unto the 



, 



154 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

coming of the Lord, shall not prevent (rise before) 
them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of 
the archangel and with the trump of God ; and the 
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are 
alive and remain shall be caught up together with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; 
and so shall we ever be with the Lord." With this 
accords what he says to the Corinthians, " Behold, 
I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but 
we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twink- 
ling of an eye, at the last trump ; for the trumpet 
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorrupti- 
ble, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put 
on immortality. So when this corruptible shall 
have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have 
put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the 
saying, that is written, Death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory. death, where is thy sting? grave, where is 
thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength 
of sin is the law ; but thanks be to God, who giv- 
eth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
With this also agrees the solemn language of St. 
Peter, u The day of the Lord will come as a thief 
in the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass away 
w T ith a great noise, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are 
therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all 
these things shall be dissolved, what manner of per- 



HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICES AND WORK. 155 

sons ought yc to be in all holy conversation and 
godliness, looking for and hasting unto the com- 
ing of the day of God, wherein the heavens being 
on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we, according 
to his promise, look for new heavens and a new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. " 

It ought to be enough for us to know that he shall 
come again in glorious majesty ; that it is one of 
the sure promises of God ; that it is among those 
unchangeable decrees, every jot and tittle of which 
shall stand fast, though heaven and earth pass away. 
It ought to be enough for us, that it is not only re- 
vealed as certain, but like the coming of death, as 
imminent to all generations of men. As no man 
or angel can say when it shall come ; so none can 
say when it shall not. It is certain ; it will be sud- 
den, even as the lightning of heaven ; and it may 
be soon. The closing message of the Apocalypse 
is, " He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely, 
I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Je- 
sus. " Like the first advent, this second coming is 
to live, as a fresh perennial hope, in the heart of the 
church until it is realized in glorious fruition. It is 
to bring unmingled joy and glory to all God's chil- 
dren, not only at the close, but through all the 
stages of the pilgrimage. From the first it was 
intended to pour a stream of holy joy, by anticipa- 
tion, along the whole track of ages, as generation 
after generation of the saints has loved and longed 



156 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

for his appearing. All the grand events in the his- 
tory of redemption have been so arranged as to 
throw their celestial radiance both forward and 
backward over the course of time. It was so with 
the first advent. It has been and will be so with 
the second. The saints who live before, and those 
who come after, are partakers of the same blessed 
influences with those who are cotemporary with the 
transactions. Faith resting on the testimony of 
inspired history in God's word looks back to the 
cross of Calvary, as for four thousand years it 
looked back to the first promise in Eden. Faith 
and hope, resting in like manner on the sure voice 
of inspired prophecy in God's word, looks forward 
now to this glorious revelation of the Son of God 
from heaven, even as, for four thousand years, they 
pointed the eye of every believer to the first mani- 
festation of the Son of God in the flesh. And thus 
with faith looking back to rest on all that God has 
said and done, with hope looking forward to rest on 
all that he is yet to do, and love looking up to rest 
on all that he is in his own glorious person and 
character, the whole economy of salvation is so 
arranged, that, in whatever dispensation of the church 
the believer's lot is cast, he has all the fulness of 
the blessings of the gospel of Christ, for Christ is 
ever with him, and Christ is all in all. 



THE SAVING TOWER OF BIS GOSPEL. 157 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SAVING POWER OF HIS GOSPEL. 

All these great facts and doctrines connected 
With the person, character, offices, and work of 
Christ taken together constitute the gospel. The 
essence of the Bible is the gospel ; and the essence 
of the gospel is Christ. In the history of Christ, 
in his life, character, labours, sufferings, death, re- 
surrection, ascension, and Mediatorial reign, we find 
the great truths of Divine mercy and grace, which 
every sinner must embrace in order to be saved, and 
which God has revealed as the glad tidings of great 
joy to all people. " This is a faithful saying, and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
into the world to save sinners. " 

This story of Immanuel reveals the way and the 
only possible way of salvation for any soul of man. 
It contains the only facts, the only remedy, the 
only influences, which meet all the fearful exigences 
of our lost condition. To believe this story in all 
its fulness is to inherit everlasting life. To reject 
it is to perish utterly and for ever. 

The Apostle Paul gives a striking summary of 
the great facts of this gospel, in their immediate 

u 



158 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

connection with Christ, when he says, " Without 
controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God 
was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, 
seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed 
on in the world, received up into glory." These, 
indeed, are the essential facts of the gospel, without 
which it would be no gospel. It is only because 
Christ, the Son of God, is in it, as the power of God 
and the wisdom of God unto salvation, that it has 
any efficacy in saving a soul from death, and in re- 
claiming a world from sin. As Christ therefore is 
the sum and substance of the gospel, and we have 
undertaken to unfold his glorious life and character 
as exhibited in all that he hath done and suffered ; 
having thus far spoken of him in his varied estates, 
labours, gifts, virtues, instructions, offices, miracles, 
and mighty works, as Immanuel, the Mediator be- 
tween God and man, it remains only to complete 
our view by a brief survey of that gospel which is 
the great result or effect of his work. This gospel 
is the church's great treasure ; the world's richest 
inheritance ; and this, with all its blessed influences, 
its priceless hopes for time and eternity, we owe to 
Jesus. In the course of ages there have been many 
great benefactors of mankind, who have toiled, suf- 
fered, and died, to leave posterity a legacy of good. 
There is but one benefactor who has left mankind a 
gospel of Divine grace and salvation. Let us 
mark well the secret of its power. " The weapons 
of our warfare," says the apostle, u are not carnal, 



THE SAVING TOWER OF IITS GOSPEL. 159 

but mighty through God to the pulling down of 
strong holds." 

First of all the gospel carries with it the con- 
vincing and enlightening power of the truth. It is 
a system of truth — tho very truth which God re- 
veals. Resting all its claims upon the evidence of 
facts, and appealing for the reality of its facts to 
the testimony of God and man, it challenges the 
scrutiny, the conviction, the belief, the homage 
of every rational mind. It addresses the under- 
standing and the conscience of every human being. 
It speaks to his reason, to his instincts, to his 
deepest experience. In the name of God it de- 
mands a hearing ; and then on the broad basis of 
infallible proof, it demonstrates itself to be worthy 
of all acceptation. And thus, as the accredited 
truth of God, it claims the assent of that whole in- 
tellectual and moral nature which God has given to 
man for the very purpose of knowing and obeying 
the truth. The human soul was made for truth, 
eternal truth. It must feed on truth; it must grow 
by truth, as the very law of its being, the aliment 
of its subsistence. Nor can it reject the truth 
without doing violence to its nature. In like manner, 
as the soul is God's workmanship, created with ca- 
pacities to know and follow the truth, the gospel is 
God's workmanship— a perfect system of Divine 
truth — revealed and offered to man in his darkness 
and impotence for the purpose of restoring to him 



160 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

that light of truth and that life of God in the soul, 
which he had lost by sin. 

By his gospel, therefore, as a system of Divine, 
eternal truth, revealed for man's salvation, Christ 
speaks to all the world, as never man spake. The 
Bible is full of examples, and the world itself, 
wherever this gospel has been preached, is full of 
examples of that moral power by which his words 
find a response in the deepest convictions of our 
nature, and cleave their way to the inmost experi- 
ence of every living man. When he reasons of 
righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come, 
as he did in the days of his earthly ministry, and 
as he does through all the sacred pages by his pro- 
phets and apostles, men feel that their very con- 
sciences are made manifest, and that they are open 
and naked to the eyes of Him with whom they have 
to do. Conscious guilt trembles, like Felix, on the 
very throne of power. He slays them by the 
breath of his mouth. His word of truth is quick 
and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, 
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and 
spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner 
of the thoughts and intents of the heart. In this 
convincing and enlightening power over the human 
mind, and in this mastery of conscience, there 
never has been anything on earth like the gospel. 

But it is remarkable, that, while revealing to us 
the only way of salvation from sin, Christ has 
taught the world its most important lessons on a 



Tin: SAVING tower of his gospel. 101 

thousand other subjects. This gospel has been 
found to be the great reformer and civilizcr of man. 
We behold in it not alone the power of God and the 
wisdom of God unto salvation to every one that be- 
lieveth, but the true moral life of all nations. It 
contains all the truth of God respecting the road to 
heaven and the hope of immortality. It also con- 
tains the most important truth yet known to man, 
respecting all the highest and best interests of the 
present world. It is the true elevator of all human 
society. It is the only civilizer and peacemaker 
among the nations. There is a far-reaching wisdom 
in this gospel, which, from the beginning, has seemed 
to comprehend the whole problem of man's wretch- 
edness, to provide for all his wants, to anticipate all 
his boasted discoveries in art and science, and to 
make him feel, even to the end of the world, that 
in its presence, he is but a child and a learner. 

The highest attainment which moral philosophy 
has yet made only carries us back to the words of 
Jesus as its most fitting formula, " Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them, for this is the law and the prophets." Our 
whole theory of civil and religious liberty, as 
founded upon a total separation of church and state, 
seems to have been comprehended in that memorable 
saying, " Render therefore to Caesar the things that 
are Csesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 
The wealth of nations, the progress of society, the 
peace and prosperity of the world, the true political 
14* 



162 THE BEAUTY OF IMMAXUEL. 

economy for all mankind, were all announced in the 
maxim, " Put up thy sword, for they that take the 
sword shall also perish by the sword." After 
eighteen centuries of toil, of study, and of advance- 
ment, it is remarkable that the last analysis of all 
our mental, moral, political, and social science, only 
carries us back to the simple and sublime, yet inci- 
dental, utterances of this gospel, for its truest and 
best exponent. 

Again ; this gospel vindicates itself as the power 
and wisdom of God, because it comes to man with 
all the attractive and constraining power of Divine 
love. It reveals God as the God of love ; it ex- 
hibits God in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself by the cross ; its great plea with man is, 
that " God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and 
its universal proclamation is, u Ho, every one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And the Spirit 
and the Bride say, Come, and let him that heareth 
say, Come, and let him that is athirst come, and 
whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." It is a gospel of love, conceived in the in- 
finite love of God the Father, executed in the 
amazing self-sacrificing love of God the Son, and 
applied by the constraining love of God the Spirit. 
Flowing from the inexhaustible fountain of Divine 
love, all other love excelling, its effect is love — 
universal love of man to his brother man, and 



THE BAYING POWJBR or Hlfl GOSPEL. 108 

eternal love of man to his redeeming God. We 
love him because lie first loved us. Love is the 
moral philosophy of the gospel. Love is its grand 
motive, by which faith works, purifying the heart 
and overcoming the world. Love is the fulfilling 
of all its laws. Love is the vital principle of all 
its obedience. It is by the power of love that it 
wins the human heart, and gains all its proudest 
triumphs over the world, and the flesh, and the devil. 
There is, perhaps, nothing which more distinguishes 
the gospel from all the systems and devices of hu- 
man philosophy, and demonstrates it to be the 
mighty power of God, than this wonderful manner 
in which it has revealed the love of God. It has 
thus bound the human heart in chains of everlasting 
love to God, and encircled the earth with a network 
of holy influences, which shall one day bring it in 
willing and adoring homage to Immanuel's feet. 

Still further, this gospel makes its appeal to the 
heart of every living and dying man, as nothing 
else has ever done or can do, because it carries with 
it the power of a Divine consolation. It is the 
friend and helper of the w T retched, the perishing, 
the lost. It is the only thing on earth that can 
speak peace to the troubled soul, and whisper hope 
in the ear of the dying sinner. When all other 
resources fail, when friends and comforters have all 
forsaken us, when the very cords of life are break- 
ing, and nothing is left us but to die, there is a voice 
here which can give us courage and consolation amid 



164 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

the darkness of the valley and shadow of death. 
Through all the trials of life, and all the dangers 
of dissolving nature, the soul that hath laid hold 
upon the hope of this gospel, can look up, with 
calm confidence, and say: "Thou art with me, I 
will fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, they com- 
fort me." Here is the patience of the saints. 
Here is the hope of the blessed. Here is the strong 
consolation of the cross. He, who was touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, who hath borne 
our griefs and carried our sorrows, who was bruised 
for our iniquities, and had the chastisement of our 
peace laid upon him, who passed through the iron 
gates of death before us, and was made perfect 
through sufferings, hath spoken to us, by his gospel, 
such words of consolation as never man spake. 
Clothed in all the tender compassions of our mortal 
nature, and, at the same time, arrayed in all the glori- 
ous attributes of the Godhead, having authority on 
earth to forgive sins, and power to destroy all the ene- 
mies of our souls, he was able to offer strong consola- 
tion to all the sons and daughters of sorrow. While 
upon earth he spake, and now that he is gone up to 
glory he still speaks, in all the invitations and offers 
of this gospel, words of pardon, of peace, of comfort, 
of loving sympathy, of grace and mercy, such as 
mortal tongues have never spoken, such as human 
ears had never heard before. " To you, men, I 
call, and my voice is to the sons of men ! Come 
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 



TTIK SAVING POWEK OF I! IS GOSPEL. 165 

and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you 
and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in 
heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 

To the weeping sisters at the grave of Lazarus, 
he said, as he alone could say, " Thy brother shall 
rise again. I am the resurrection and the life. 
He that believeth in me, though he w r ere dead, yet 
shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die." To the poor, blind Bar- 
timeus, on the way-side as he passed by at Jericho, 
who rose and pressed towards him through the 
crowd, crying, " Jesus, thou son of David, have 
compassion on me," he said, " Go thy way, thy 
faith hath made thee whole." On the last great 
day of the Feast of Tabernacles, he stood and cried 
in the hearing of the thousands of Israel, and of 
the officers who had been commissioned to arrest 
him, with accents of love and mercy which ought 
to have melted the hearts of all that dying multi- 
tude, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me 
and drink." To his faithful but sorrowing disciples, 
on the night before *he suffered, the last night he 
was to be with them on earth, he spake those pre- 
cious and memorable w T ords so full of love, so over- 
flowing with Divine consolation : u Let not your 
heart be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also 
in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. 
I go to prepare a place for you. In this world ye 
shall have tribulation ; but be of good cheer, I 
have overcome the world. Peace I leave with you; 



166 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

my peace I give unto you ; not as the world giveth, 
give I unto you." To the poor penitent thief on 
the cross at his side, who turned to him his dying 
eyes and prayed, " Lord, remember me when thou 
comest into thy kingdom," he said, "This day shalt 
thou be with me in Paradise." 

And still that voice of love and mercy, that voice 
of hope for the perishing, and strong consolation for 
the penitent, sorrowing soul, is ringing through all 
the world. In the wretched abodes of poverty and 
sin, in the dark prison houses of sin and shame, 
this gospel still utters its proclamations of mercy 
from the Lord, saying, " Come now, and let us 
reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins 
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 
From the beginning it has been preached to the 
poor. It is adapted to the deepest necessities and 
wants of the poor. It comes and offers its richest 
consolations without money and without price. 
Wherever wretchedness can cry for mercy and 
helplessness can trust, there may all its saving 
power be felt. In the chambers of disease and 
suffering, where heart and flesh are failing fast, 
and the world is receding from the view of the 
dying, there its voice of consolation may be heard 
in strains as sweet as angels use, whispering peace 
to the soul. In the silent cemeteries of the dead — 
on all their marble monuments, over all their solemn 
gateways and sepulchral arches, graven with an 



THE SAVING POWER OF BIS (JOSPEL. 1G7 

iron pen and lead in the rock for ever, are inscribed 
the words of this gospel — the living words of Jesus. 
And there are no other words on mortal tongues 
which can take their places. In the sacred presence 
of our buried dead, in the darkened chambers of 
the suffering sick, and on all those occasions where 
human hearts lie crushed and bleeding in the dust 
of affliction, we instinctively feel, that there are no 
words fit to utter except the words of Jesus. These 
alone are sacred enough for our sorrow. And these 
alone can tell us of hope, of immortality, of Divine 
consolation. 

But, last of all, and above all, this gospel is the 
mighty power of God for the pulling down of the 
strongholds of sin and Satan, because it is ever ac- 
companied by the energies of the Divine Spirit, the 
third person of the adorable Trinity. We must not 
forget that, while the gospel is the special result of 
the work of Christ, it is at the same time the united 
work of all the persons of the Godhead. It is, in 
fact, a revelation and a manifestation of the Triune 
God, requiring the work and agency of each 
adorable person in the unfolding of its scheme of 
mercy, and displaying, in turn, both to men and to 
angels, their glorious attributes and character. In 
this, more than in any other work of his hands, God 
has unfolded the riches of his grace and glory, in 
making known to us the mysterious union of Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost in the Godhead. 

In analyzing the elements of influence over man, 



168 



TH^ BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 



as wielded by the gospel, we have seen that it carries 
with it, first, the mighty power of Divine truth, and 
then the attractive power of Divine love, and then, 
again, the power of Divine consolation ; and that, 
having all these inherent elements of success, it is 
adapted to do the w r ork and accomplish the end for 
which God designed it. But there is another power 
— a power over and above all these, which is abso- 
lutely essential to their efficiency. It is the power 
of the Spirit of God. It is that Divine power which 
sets all the other powers of truth, and love, and 
consolation to work. It is a power not lodged in 
the gospel like truth, and love, and consolation, 
which can act only as it is acted on, but ever coming 
down from above to accompany the gospel wherever 
it is preached, in order to apply its truth, to unfold 
its love, and give its consolation to the heart of man. 
This is the grand secret of all its efficiency and suc- 
cess in opening the eyes, winning the hearts, and 
saving the souls of dying men. This is the special 
work and office of the Holy Ghost — to apply the 
gospel and make it effectual to our salvation. 

Still, in contemplating the gospel as the result of 
the work of Christ, this agency of the Holy Ghost 
must be included. The Comforter, according to the 
eternal covenant of redemption, and according to 
his promise when he departed, was sent forth from 
the Father, to take his place in the church and to 
carry on his work. Christ's only true Vicar and 
Representative on earth is this Comforter, the Holy 



THE SAVING POWER OF HIS GOSPEL. 109 

Ghost. Hence the whole work of the Spirit in the 
hearts of men is, in one sense, the work of Christ, 
even as in another sense it is also the work of the 
Father. This Divine agency of the Spirit, in ap- 
plying the truth of God to the hearts of men, and 
so mnking the redeeming work of Christ effectual 
to their salvation, was only a part of the grand 
economy of grace. While each person of the God- 
head fills his own office, and performs a special 
work, they all work together in such a manner, that 
what one does may be ascribed to the others also. 
Our Saviour was explicit on this point, when he 
said, " My Father worketh hitherto and I work. I 
came not to do mine own will, but the will of him 
that sent me, and to finish his work. I do nothing 
of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I 
speak these things. And he that sent me is with 
me ; the Father hath not left me alone ; for I do 
always those things that please him. ,, The same 
intimate union of purpose, and communion in work 
which thus existed between the Father and the Son, 
even while the Son was on earth, also exists between 
the Spirit and the Son, now that the Son hath as- 
cended to his mediatorial throne, and the Spirit, in 
the bosom of the church below, is still carrying on 
his work. And so this power of the Divine Spirit, 
which accompanies the preached gospel, even as 
from the beginning of revelation it has inspired the 
word of God in all the Scriptures, and made that 
word effectual to salvation, may be regarded as one 
15 



170 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

grand department of the work of Christ. The 
Spirit itself, like all the other blessed influences of 
the gospel, is the gift of Christ, and the very pur- 
chase of his death. " If I go not away, the Com- 
forter will not come to you, but if I depart, I will 
send him unto you. And when he is come he will 
teach you all things, and bring all things to your 
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 
He shall reprove the world of sin, and of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment to come. ,, 

While, therefore, the Spirit is the Comforter sent 
by Christ to communicate the consolations of the 
gospel, he is also the great reprover to enforce upon 
the conscience of man, all its doctrines, precepts, 
promises, and warnings. And this Divine Instructer 
is always in the bosom of the church, to accompany 
and make effectual the preaching of the word: "Go 
ye and teach all nations : lo, I am with you always, 
even to the end of the world. " Though this 
treasure of truth divine is borne by earthen vessels, 
yet its efficiency is of God. Man works and God 
works. And God hath chosen the weakness of 
man's agency in the work of preaching this gospel, 
that the mighty power might be seen to be of God. 
And thus it is that the gospel is sure of success — 
final and complete success. Despite of human 
weakness and folly, despite of open enemies and 
false friends, foes without and traitors within, over 
all the opposition of earth and hell, it shall triumph 
gloriously. God will not let it fail. "He shall see 



Tin: savixc POWER or ins GOSPEL. 171 

of the travail of his soul and bo satisfied," is the 
promise to the Mediator. And this is the grand 
office and end of all the Spirit's work in the soul — 
to make the work of Christ for the soul effectual to 
its complete salvation. 

Well might the apostle say, "I am sure, that 
when I come unto you, I will come in the fulness 
of the blessing of the gospel of Christ." He felt 
that this story of the cross which he preached 
was indeed a gospel of good things, complete in all 
its parts, adequate in all its powers, worthy of God 
and man. It is, indeed, full of incomprehensible 
wonders, mysterious doctrines, far above reason's 
grasp, amazing scenes, past and yet to come, which 
can be received only on the testimony of God. 
But it is just as full of great facts, and heart ex- 
periences, and plain palpable doctrines which every 
sane man knows to be true, and to be the most im- 
portant of all truth. And perhaps the most amaz- 
ing thing of all is, that any human being can reject 
it : that, in a world of darkness and death, where 
there is no other light, and no other possible chance 
of life, guilty, dying man should turn away in his 
impotent folly, spurning the only arm that can save 
him. Surely the greatest of all sins — the most un- 
reasonable, the most unaccountable, and the most 
fatal, is the sin of unbelief — the sin of rejecting the 
Son of God. How would it strike the mind of man 
with astonishment, if he could see such a spectacle 
among the fallen angels, as that which this world 



172 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

now presents to the universe in the case of every 
unbelieving sinner ! If God had visited the lost 
angels with such mercy, and such offers of life as 
he makes to us in the gospel, what would man think 
if he should see all hell arrayed in opposition to 
God's ambassador ; despising every overture of re- 
conciliation; and, at last, rising up in wrath against 
him, as man rose against the incarnate Son of God? 
What would man think if he could see the immacu- 
late Son of God visiting the lost and ruined spirits 
of the pit, in their dark abodes; standing with them 
for a season on the burning soil of hell; paying their 
penalty and bearing their curse as he did ours ; of- 
fering them redemption through his blood as he does 
to us ; weeping over their sin and folly in all the 
tenderness of Divine compassion ; saying as he did 
to the sinners of lost Jerusalem, "Oh thou that 
killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent 
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thee, as 
a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, but 
ye would not!" and then, at last, as rejected, de- 
spised, crucified, he dies at their hands, crying, 
" Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
do," and all in vain because of their unbelief! But 
this is not the sin of devils. It is the sin of unbe- 
lieving men. 

Unbelieving men, in their amazing folly and 
wickedness, reject this gospel, notwithstanding all 
its evidences, all its promises of life, all its manifes- 
tations of Divine love and mercy. They see no 



THE SAVING POWER OF fflfl (K)SPEL. 173 

beauty in it that they should desire it. Though 
angels desire to look into it; though the world is 
full of the trophies of its power ; though heaven is 
already peopled with myriads of happy spirits, re- 
deemed through its blessed influences ; though kings, 
and prophets, and nobles of the earth looked for- 
ward through distant ages, rejoicing in its glad 
tidings ; and apostles could say, " God forbid that we 
should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto us and 
we unto the world;" still unbelieving men, who have 
their all at stake upon the issue — a heaven to gain, 
or a heaven to lose by it — see no beauty in Im- 
manuel, no glory in this gospel of God's grace. 
"He was in the world, and the world was made by 
him, and the world knew him not." Through his 
preached gospel, and by the mighty working of his 
Spirit, everywhere bearing witness in the hearts of 
men to the truth and power of that gospel, he is 
still in the world; the world has been redeemed by 
him ; and yet the unbelieving know him not, admire 
him not, receive him not. In all ages past it has 
been true, and it is still true, that there are some to 
whom this glorious gospel has been hid. It is to 
some a savour of life unto life, to others a savour 
of death unto death. From the very nature of it 
as a remedy for sin — -as God's only remedy for sin 
— it can leave no man as it finds him. It must 
cure or kill. It must save him from condemnation 
and give him life for evermore, or it will sink him 
15* 



174 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

down to a deeper and a darker woe, with the aggra- 
vated guilt of having rejected the Son of God. 

The apostle John, in the opening of his history 
of this gospel, describes the case not only of his 
own countrymen, but of the men of all countries 
and all generations thus far, where the gospel has 
been preached. "He came unto his own and his 
own receiveihim not. But as many as received him, 
to them gave he power to become the sons of God, 
even to them that believe on his name ; who were born, 
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God." The turning point in 
the character and destinies of men, is at the cross. 
All things for time and eternity hang on their re- 
ception or rejection of the Son of God. To receive 
him, to believe on his name, to trust in him, is to 
become a son of God, an heir of glory. To receive 
him, as he is freely offered in the gospel to every 
perishing sinner of our race, is to be born of God 
by a new, celestial birth. To reject him, to turn 
away from him, to find no beauty in him, is to die ; 
because it is to reject the only remedy which God 
has provided for our lost estate, and to continue 
under that curse and condemnation which is upon us 
already — which is death. So that wherever the gos- 
pel goes, it must of necessity draw a line, deep, broad, 
and ineffaceable, between those who receive the Son 
of God by believing on him, and those who by unbe- 
lief reject him. Even as he declared, when, having 
finished the work of man's redemption, he ascended 



THE BAYING POTHER 01 HIS GOSPEL. 175 

to heaven and said, iw Go ye into all the world and 
preach the gospel to every creature. He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that 
believeth not shall be damned." 

What then is it to believe? What is the essence 
of that faith in Christ by which he is received, and 
through which he saves the soul? "He is the power 
of God and the wisdom of God to all them that 
belie ve." And he commands all men every where to 
repent and believe the gospel. Nothing, therefore, 
can be more important than that w r e should under- 
stand what it is to believe, what it is to have a sav- 
ing faith in Christ. It is the glory of the gospel 
that it does not leave us in any doubt or uncertainty 
on this essential point. It is the glory of the gospel 
that this one act of the soul, whereby we receive 
and rest upon Christ alone for salvation, wdrilst it 
is a saving grace wrought in us by God's Spirit, is 
as simple and intelligible as any act of man can 
be. It is so simple that the wayfaring man, though 
a fool as to other things, need not mistake it. 

It is first to assent to the truth respecting Christ 
as true, and then to approve it as good, and then to 
trust the soul upon him for salvation. To see him 
as he is revealed in the gospel, to understand who 
he is, to approve and admire him as the Saviour we 
need, and then to renounce all other dependence, 
and trust in him alone for salvation — this is to re- 
ceive Christ, this is to believe. It is not enough 
merely to assent to the truth, to understand the 



176 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

truth, to accept the truth as true. For ungodly 
men may do this as well as true believers. The 
truth may be held in unrighteousness. In this sense 
the devils believe, and yet tremble. Nor is it 
enough, after understanding and assenting to the 
truth, merely to approve and admire the truth as 
good. Many wicked and unbelieving men have in 
their inmost hearts admired the character of Christ, 
and given their approbation to the doctrines of the 
Bible. But they never came to Christ for salva- 
tion, never trusted in him. The angels in heaven 
approve and admire all the truth respecting the 
work and character of Christ. But they do not 
trust, they need not trust in him for salvation ; and 
hence they cannot exercise that saving faith which 
is required of us. We see, then, that the essential 
thing in a true, saving faith, which distinguishes it 
from every thing else, is to trust in Christ, or com- 
mit our souls to his hands for salvation. "We may 
understand and assent to the truth, even as wicked 
men and devils do ; we may approve and admire the 
truth, even as the angels do ; but any thing short of 
a personal trust and committing of our souls to 
Christ is short of saving faith. 

These two things — the assent of the understand- 
ing to the truth, and the heart's approval of it as 
good — always accompany the act of saving faith. 
But alone they do not constitute it. For they may 
exist without it as we have just seen. We must 
first understand the truth before we can approve it, 



THE RAYING POWBB OB u\< (JOSPEL. 177 

and W€ must approve it before avc can trust our 
souls upon it. So that in every case of true saving 
faith there will he first an intelligent conviction of 
the truth on evidence, as revealed in the Scriptures, 
and then a moral perception and approval of it as 
good and necessary, and then a cordial embracing of 
it by trusting our souls into the Saviour's hands. 
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life." This is the confession of one who 
understands the way of salvation as opened through 
Christ alone, whose heart and conscience approve 
of that way, and who has staked his own soul upon 
it by a personal application to Christ. Peter takes 
God's testimony as true, sees that he needs a 
Saviour, and that Christ is the only Saviour ; Peter 
sees that this salvation through Christ alone, is not 
only true, but good, desirable ; worthy of all accep- 
tation as the one thing needful; and with his mind 
resting on this conviction of truth, and his heart 
filled with this moral approbation of it as good, he 
trusts his all to Christ for time and eternity, he 
comes to Christ, he receives and rests on Christ for 
salvation. This is faith. This is what every sinner 
must do in order to be saved. He must give up all 
other hopes, and commit his case personally to 
Christ. This is all that he can do. This is the 
very least he ought to wish to do. The act is just 
analogous to that of a poor sick man, labouring 
under some fatal malady, who has tried a thousand 
remedies in vain, but at last finds one physician of 




178 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

whose skill he is convinced, and whose mode of 
treatment he approves, and in the strength of these 
convictions, commits his case and trusts his life into 
his hands. So here, for all the deeper maladies of 
the soul there is balm in Gilead, there is a safe and 
skilful physician. There is but one. It is Im- 
manuel. And the thing we have to do is to apply- 
to him for help, to submit the case to him, to trust 
in him. This is the saving faith of the gospel. 

Well may the apostle speak of this remedy for 
sin as the " glorious gospel of the blessed God." It 
is alike glorious in its grandeur and in its simplicity, 
glorious in all its Divine provisions, glorious in its 
adaptation to man's necessities, and glorious in the 
plain, equitable, and gracious terms on which it 
offers salvation to the perishing. It is simply, be- 
lieve and live, believe what God has spoken, ap- 
prove what God has done, accept what God has 
offered in his Son. For God has no pleasure in the 
death of the sinner ; God, who created the soul, has 
given his Son to redeem it ; and the great message 
of the gospel to every soul is, repent, believe, and 
live, in view of what Christ has done; for God is in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself. " For God 
sent not his Son into the world to condemn the 
world, but that the world through him might be 
saved." 

But notwithstanding the way of salvation is so 
plain, the terms of the gospel so easy, the character 
of Immanuel so attractive, and all his promises and 



THE SAVING POWER OF HIS GOSPEL. 179 

invitations so blessed and glorious, there have al- 
ways been thousands to whom all these things have 
been but as Bounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 
The human heart may be so dead to all that is 
bright and glorious, as not to know when its greatest 
good cometh. Amid the most splendid manifesta- 
tions of eternal power and wisdom, there are men 
who can walk unconscious of the presence of a God. 
And so amid all the triumphs of gospel grace, and 
all the glories of Immanuel's person, there have 
been, and are human hearts that can see no beauty 
in him that they should desire him, and no reason 
why they should believe on him. He is to them as 
he was to the Jews of old, a stumbling block, or as 
he was to the Greeks, foolishness. Writing to the 
Corinthians, the apostle Paul said, " After that, in 
the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not 
God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching 
to save them that believe. For the Jews require a 
sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we 
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling 
block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto 
them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ 
the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because 
the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the 
weakness of God is stronger than men." 

In this passage there are three distinct types of 
character brought into view, which represent very 
accurately the different classes that have existed in 
every age under the preaching of the gospel. They 



180 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

are the Jew, the Greek, and the called of God. We 
have here the formal, superstitious, wonder-loving 
Jew, accustomed to miracles, and ready to demand 
a sign from heaven as the only warrant for his faith. 
We have then the philosophizing, incredulous Greek, 
scouting every thing as fable and foolishness, which 
does not answer to his inward sense of beauty and 
wisdom. And we have also the humble, evangelical 
believer in Christ, called of God, and taught by the 
Spirit to put no confidence in Jewish ceremony, or 
Grecian wisdom, as touching the things of the soul's 
salvation. Wherever this gospel was proclaimed by 
Paul and his fellow apostles, most men who heard 
it long enough to know what it taught, and to be 
affected by it, might have been ranged into three 
distinct classes, not inaptly represented by the Jew, 
the Greek, and the called of God. And from that 
day to this, wherever it has been faithfully preached, 
these three ancient types have generally reappeared, 
well defining the positions of all who have heard 
the gospel, and the feelings with which they have 
either received or rejected the messages of God. 
Always and everywhere it has met with the Jew, 
the Greek, and the humble believer. To some it 
is still what it was to the self-righteous, ceremonious 
Jew, a stumbling block. To some it is still just 
what it was to the self-complacent, boastful Greek, 
foolishness. While to some, called from the ranks 
of both Jews and Greeks, it is still all that it was 



THE PAVING POWBB or ins OOffPBL. 181 
to the primitive disciples, the power of God and the 

wisdom of God unto salvation. 

And thus also, answering to these three classes 
into which from the beginning the hearers of the 
gospel have been divided, there have been three 
widely different and conflicting views of the gospel 
itself, giving rise to as many different systems within 
the nominally Christian church, each claiming to be 
the only true gospel. These are, first, the sacra- 
mental system, or formalism, which makes religion 
consist mainly in externals, the rites and ceremonies 
of worship, and rigid conformity to ecclesiastical 
order: secondly, rationalism, or the system which 
makes human reason the umpire of all revelation, 
rejecting both mysteries and miracles: and thirdly, 
the spiritual and evangelical system of grace, whose 
central truth is Christ crucified as an atoning sacri- 
fice for sin, and which attributes everything good in 
man to a Divine influence. 

Now it is manifest that only the last of these has 
any claim to be regarded as the true gospel of the 
New Testament. Ritualism on the one side, and 
rationalism on the other, are but pretenders, claim- 
ing to be a gospel while they are no gospel. And 
yet many of the creeds and systems that have ap- 
peared in the past history of the church, belong to 
the one error or the other. In all ages men have 
been found subverting the truth and power of the 
gospel, by a departure into formalism on the one 
side or rationalism on the other. And any one, 
16 



182 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

who is himself acquainted with the essential spirit of 
the gospel, can read the past history of the church, 
or survey its present condition, and easily assign to its 
proper place every heresy, and every sect, and every 
individual opinion. He may classify them with all 
the exactness of a science. For if not found with 
Paul, glorying in Jesus Christ and him crucified as 
the power of God and the wisdom of God unto sal- 
vation, they will be found standing in unbelief, with 
the ceremony-worshipping Jew on the one side, or 
the reason-worshipping Greek on the other. If 
Christ Jesus be not exalted to the throne, as all in 
all, Lord of the conscience, sovereign of the church, 
and only Saviour of the soul, then either man with 
his boasting reason, or the church with her ancient 
prescription, will usurp the throne. The Jew and 
the Greek are still alive, even among those who call 
themselves Christians, ever striving to substitute for 
the true gospel of God that which is another gospel 
altogether, and is therefore no gospel. The Juda- 
izing teacher of the modern church, forsaking the 
true faith of the gospel, comes with his venerable 
traditions and church ceremonies to exalt a ritual 
service, a baptismal font, a wafer, the pope, or the 
virgin mother into the place of Christ. The ration- 
alistic teacher on the other hand, in the very spirit 
of an old Greek, exalts human reason, or art, or 
man's natural love of the sublime and beautiful, 
above the very testimony of God's word, and thus 



THE BAYING POWER OF Iirs GOSPEL. 183 

baptizing his infidelity with the name of Christian, 
subverts the gospel of Christ, 

It is obvious to remark that the true gospel of 
Christ, by which he becomes the power of God and 
the wisdom of God for salvation to all that believe, 
stands midway between these two extremes, as far 
removed from the superstitious formalism of the 
one, as from the sceptical rationalism of the other. 
The true evangelical system holds this middle posi- 
tion, not because it is any compromise between the 
antagonistic errors, but because it stood there at 
the beginning. That is the ancient position. The 
true gospel w r as first in the field. And the other 
systems are but departures from it. Men have un- 
dertaken to be wise above what is written, to im- 
prove the gospel of God by their philosophies, to 
devise some more reasonable and acceptable way ; 
and the result in every case has been a departure 
from the truth, either in the one direction or the 
other, either in the road which leads through sacra- 
mentalism back to Rome, or in the road which leads 
through rationalism to Pelagianism, Socinianism, 
infidelity, atheism, and all the modern errors. 

The unbelieving Jew of old, and his modern suc- 
cessors, the ritualists and the legalists of every 
school, unwilling to be saved by Christ alone, and 
going about to establish their own righteousness, exalt 
the rites and ceremonies of external worship, and 
demand conformity, like Nebuchadnezzar, to some 
great idol image of their own creation ; and thus 



184 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

subvert the gospel by vain traditions and legal 
works. The unbelieving Greek, and his modern 
successors, the baptized rationalists, and sceptics of 
every heretical sect, too proud to take the simple 
story of the cross in its plain and obvious import, 
rush to the opposite extreme of the scale of error, 
and discarding not only man's alleged miracles,' 
but God's also, reduce the gospel to a thing of cold, 
logical reason, until there is nothing Divine left in 
it, not even the Divinity of Immanuel ; and thus 
subvert the truth by a philosophy, falsely so called. 
It is not strange, that "when men can find no better 
righteousness than their own to build upon, they should 
take refuge in the will-worship and superstitions of 
popery, and kindred forms of sacramentalism. And 
it is not strange that those who can find in the gos- 
pel no trace of Immanuel's Divinity or the Spirit's 
power, should obey that instinct of the soul which 
seeks to worship something, and so exalt human 
reason, or philosophy, or nature, to that throne 
which Christ ought alone to fill. But it is strange 
that any human being with the Bible in his hands 
should so mistake both its letter and its spirit, as to 
call either the one or the other of these systems the 
true gospel of God. 

To the one class this plain and simple gospel is 
still a stumbling block, as it was to the Jews at the 
first ; and to the other it is still foolishness, as it 
was to the Greek. The apostle Paul understood 
the position of both parties as they stood in his day, 



Tin: SAVING power of BIS GOSPEL. 183 

and he has virtually anticipated and described the 
position and character of their successors, down to 

the present hour. The Jews wanted power — Divine 
miraculous power that should come down from heaven 
and consume their enemies. They longed for a 
temporal kingdom and a visible throne that should 
dash in pieces all the rulers of the earth. Their 
only idea of the Messiah of Israel was that of an- 
other David who should treat their enemies as David 
treated Goliath of Gath. They looked for a deliv- 
erer who should come as a conquering king, who 
should gird on the sword of battle, and adding to 
all the pomp of earthly grandeur, the supernatural 
power of Jehovah, should abide for ever, and make 
Jerusalem at once the terror and the glory of the 
world. And because Jesus of Nazareth seemed 
destitute of all these outward signs of power, though 
claiming to be their Messiah, they rejected his 
claims and put him to death. The apostle under- 
stood precisely their position and their prejudices, 
for he had once shared in all their ideas and expec- 
tations. Brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, a 
Hebrew of the Hebrews, he well knew the inmost 
heart of the Jew, that he wanted a religion of mi- 
raculous signs, and a Messiah of Divine, irresistible 
power. And so to the power-loving Jew, who trod 
the earth with his eye ever fixed upon the heavens 
for a sign, and whose main objection to the story of 
the crucified Nazarene, was that it was a gospel of 
weakness, utter weakness and insufficiency ; to him 
16 ♦ 



186 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

and all like him in every age, Paul replies, We preach 
a gospel of power, the mighty power of God ; we 
preach a gospel of moral, spiritual, and eternal 
power ; a gospel adequate to do that which all the 
powers of this world could never do, that is, to se- 
cure the pardon of sin and save the soul from death. 
It is the power of light in a world of darkness ; the 
power of truth in a world of error ; the power of 
holiness in a world of sin; the power of beneficence 
in a world of selfishness; the power of love in a 
world of hatred and war ; the power of immortality 
in a world shrouded in death ; a gospel bringing the 
glad tidings from God of pardon, peace, and life 
from the dead, to souls already sunk in sin, and led 
captive by the devil at his will. We preach Christ 
the power of God, unto salvation, for every one that 
believeth, whether Jew or Greek. 

The Greeks, on the other hand, wanted wisdom. 
They boasted of learning, art, and eloquence. They 
gloried in philosophy. They longed for some new 
thing. They had lost the sceptre of military power, 
and they had exploded the myths and fables, gods 
and goddesses of their once splendid mythology, 
the national religion. They had become a nation 
of reasoners and of sceptics. The highest deity 
known to their philosophy was human reason, or 
nature, or man's aesthetic sense of the sublime and 
beautiful. If there was any higher God in all the 
Pantheon, he was to them the " unknown God," and 
belonged solely to another world. Taught by their 



Tin-: swim; POWBB <>r ins GOSPEL. 187 

latest philosophy to regard every tiling superhuman 
as fabulous, they put no confidence in signs and 

wonders, and were ready to laugh to scorn the first 
mention of u Jesus and resurrection," as the vain 
babbling of an impostor. They despised the very 
things which the Jews most delighted in. They 
thirsted not for power, but for wisdom ; not for old 
traditions, but for some new thing ; not for rites, but 
for reasons. 

The apostle understood their wants precisely ; for 
he was a native of Tarsus, a famous seat of Grecian 
philosophy. He had doubtless read the books and 
even attended the schools of this proud, self-com- 
placent race, which regarded all men outside of 
Greece and her colonies, as barbarians. And thus 
to the reasoning Greek, seeking after wisdom, and 
to all like him in every age, who would reject the 
story of the cross as foolishness, utterly destitute 
of all philosophy, Paul replies, We preach a gospel 
of wisdom, the unsearchable wisdom of God; we 
have not followed cunningly devised fables, the 
product of a rude and barbarous age, or the device 
of men aiming to impose upon the world ; but we 
preach that sublime wisdom of God, which none of 
the princes of this world have ever known, which 
none of its sages could have discovered, and which, 
though long hidden from the wise and the prudent, 
is now revealed in Christ to all the chosen sons of 
God. We preach Christ the wisdom of God, the 
true and infallible word of God, able to save unto 



188 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

the uttermost all who come unto God through him, 
whether Jew or Greek. It is a wisdom which can 
guide where all other teachers fail ; a wisdom which 
shines brighter and brighter when every light of 
philosophy goes out in utter darkness. It is a wisdom 
not limited like the boasted wisdom of the Greeks, 
to the narrow bounds of that which is but ma- 
terial and perishing, but taking hold of all that is 
unseen, eternal, Divine. It is the wisdom of the 
infinite mind — the wisdom of God. It is that wis- 
dom which comes from God, and which alone can 
raise the soul to God. It is a wisdom adequate to fill 
all its high and noble faculties both for time and eter- 
nity. " In Christ are hid all the treasures of wis- 
dom and knowledge." And well may the apostle ex- 
claim as he surveys all the glorious provisions and 
promises of such a gospel and such a Saviour, "Oh 
the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God!" 

To those on the one side therefore who challenge 
power, clamour for signs and wonders, and are ready 
to reject the gospel as one of impotence, because 
it comes not with the insignia of earthly grandeur, 
Paul proclaims it as the very word of power, sov- 
ereign, saving, and eternal power, as much greater 
than all human power demanded by the Jew, as 
God is stronger than man. To those on the other 
side, who clamour for wisdom and make their boast 
of philosophy, and would reject the gospel as fool- 
ishness because it puts no confidence in the flesh, 



Tin: BAYING POWEB 01 ins GOSPEL. 189 

lays the pride of human reason in the dust, and 
abates not a jot or tittle of its high mysteries to suit 

the views of men, Paul vindicates it as the oidy 
true and saving wisdom in the world, as much 
greater than all the wisdom conceived of by the 
Greeks, as God is w T iser than men. 

It is only because Christ is a Divine Saviour, the 
power and wisdom of God unto salvation, that the 
gospel is what it is, the antidote for sin and the 
hope of a ruined world. This great mystery of 
godliness is its glory. This has enabled it to stand 
fast and hold its ground, amid all the errors and 
conflicts of the eighteen centuries which have passed 
since its first promulgation at Jerusalem. This has 
given it power to surmount all opposing forces, the 
persecutions of its enemies, and the treachery of 
professing friends, and to press its conquering way 
from nation to nation, from age to age. Had the 
gospel been what men have striven so hard to prove 
it, a mere routine of outward ceremonies on the one 
hand, or a mere string of abstract propositions 
commending themselves to human taste on the 
other, what more could it have done for the world 
than Jewish tradition or Grecian philosophy did ? 
Had it been nothing more than these it Avould long 
ago have perished, even as these have done. But 
it has had a vitality which earth and hell have not 
been able to crush ; and the secret of this inde- 
structible life is, that it reveals Christ as the powder 
and wisdom of God unto salvation. 



190 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

And yet, strange to say, though all intelligent 
readers of the New Testament, who take words in 
their obvious import, will be ready to acknowledge 
the justness of this view of the case ; still almost 
every man who hears the story of Christ and 
him crucified, and does not embrace him with a sav- 
ing faith, will be found occupying one or the other 
of these old positions. He either stands where the 
Jew stood, or where the Greek stood ; and it would 
be difficult to say which side can count the larger 
number, and which position is the more dangerous. 
Why does not Christ become a Saviour, believed, 
accepted, and loved, to that large class of persons 
in every Christian land, who hear the gospel 
preached, who read the Scriptures, who assent to 
the truth, who approve the truth, and even profess 
to admire it? Why are they still out of Christ? 
Why are they yet unbelievers as to any real, per- 
sonal, saving trust in him ? They do not intend to 
live and die without a saving acquaintance with the 
gospel ; and yet they do virtually continue in unbe- 
lief, rejecting Christ as their Saviour. For what 
are such hearers of the gospel waiting? What are 
they expecting? 

If such men will examine their hearts with can- 
dour and honesty, they will find that they are either 
like the Jew, waiting for some more wonderful way, 
or like the Greek, for some more reasonable way. 
They are either in the one class or the other, look- 
ing for more signs and wonders, before they will 



THE SAVING POWEB 09 BIS GOSPEL. 191 

believe, or for something in the way of a more con- 
vincing logic, in order to make them believe. They 
have an idea that the fault is not in themselves, but 

in the gospel ; in some want cither of supernatural 
and overpowering attestation before their eyes, or 
of rational and convincing argument upon their 
minds. 

Some, no doubt, flatter themselves that they will 
yet be Christians at a more convenient season. But 
they are waiting for more signal manifestations of 
God's power. They are not satisfied to take things 
just as God has revealed them in the gospel, and as 
thousands of others have had to take them. They 
demand something peculiar and extraordinary — 
some dream or vision of the night — something grand 
and overwhelming. Their case they think is unusual ; 
and it will take something more than common to sat- 
isfy their minds. They want a demonstration which 
is tangible, positive, decisive ; which shall flash con- 
viction through the very senses, and put the matter 
of salvation beyond all question for ever. They would 
like to have a miracle to make the Bible plainer, and 
to prove that all the other miracles are from God. 
They would believe, they think, if one should rise 
from the dead. They want the kingdom of God to 
come into their hearts with observation, with some- 
what of the same outward pomp and parade with which 
the Jews wished to see their Messiah come into the 
world. Like Naaman the Syrian, they think they 
ought to be healed in a wonderful way ; that the 



192 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

prophet ought to come out, and stand before the 
chariot, and call upon the name of the Lord his 
God, and strike his hand over the place, and thus 
recover the leper. In a word, they have the very 
spirit of the Jew; demanding a sign from heaven, 
dictating terms to God, and thus seeking to estab- 
lish their own righteousness. And what does God 
say to all such? " A wicked and adulterous genera- 
tion seeketh after a sign, and there shall be no sign 
given them, save those already given. If they be- 
lieve not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
be persuaded though one rose from the dead. Be- 
hold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish. If ye 
believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." 
Some again are standing on the opposite extreme. 
They desire nothing of this sort. They have no 
relish for mysteries and marvels in religion. They 
are not waiting for more signs, but for something 
to solve the problem of those already given. With 
them the great difficulty, preventing, as they think, 
a cordial reception of Christ, is that the gospel is 
too full of hard sayings, mysterious, incomprehen- 
sible doctrines, which do not suit their natural taste, 
or their logical reason, or their nice, poetic sense of 
justice, or their admiring perception of the sublime 
and beautiful. The gospel is not that rational, in- 
telligible, all-merciful, and beautiful system which 
they think it ought to be. They are doubtful and 
incredulous as to a thousand difficult points which 
they would like to have cleared up : and they are 



Tin: BAYING POWEB OF HIS GOSPEL, 1!«:} 

waiting for some more reasonable way, or some more 
convincing argument than they have yot seen, be- 
fore they can take up the cross and follow Jesus. 
In short, they are Greeks in spirit; ready to reject 
the wisdom of God as foolishness, because it is so 
different from the philosophy of man; and waiting 
for some new light, and for some auspicious hour, 
when the skies shall be all clear, and the problems 
all solved, and the gospel shall become a system 
level to the calibre of a finite mind! Then they 
will believe! But that hour will not come, that 
light will not be given. For this is virtually to 
reject God's testimony, and to exalt human reason 
to that throne which belongs to him alone. This is 
to be wise above w T hat is written in things where 
none but God can teach man wisdom. And what 
does Christ say to this self-righteous and exacting 
spirit which strives for the mastery when it should 
only believe and adore? " Except ye be converted 
and become as a little child, ye shall in no wise 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. If our gospel 
be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the 
god of this world hath blinded the eyes of them 
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gos- 
pel of Christ, who is the image of God, should 
shine unto them." 

The spirit of the true believer, equally removed 
from the arrogance of the Jew and the pride of the 
Greek, is that of a learner and a child, sitting at 

the feet of Immanuel. Of such is the kingdom of 
17 



194 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

heaven. The true believer takes God's testimony 
as it is, accredits it as true, the very truth of truth, 
approves it not only as true, but as right and good, 
receives and rests upon it as the only and all-suffi- 
cient salvation, embraces and glories in Immanuel 
as the chiefest among ten thousand and altogether 
lovely, takes up the cross and follows him through 
evil and through good report, as all in all, for time 
and for eternity. He asks for no other Saviour ; he 
needs no other; he can depend on no other: he is 
perfectly satisfied with the gospel as it is ; in life, 
in death, and through eternity, he is willing to fall 
at Immanuel's feet, to crown him Lord of all, and 
to cry, as believing Thomas did, "My Lord and my 
God!" 



VPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. !!>,> 



CHAPTER XIII. 

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 

But here we pause; not because we have reached 
the end, but because what we have said may, at 
least, suffice to turn the reader's thoughts to that 
revelation of Immanuel's beauty, which is contained 
in the sacred word. " His name shall be called Won- 
derful,'' said the inspired prophet. His person is 
wonderful ; his character is wonderful ; his life and 
death were wonderful; his work was wonderful; his 
gospel is wonderful; his first coming was wonderful; 
his second shall be more so ; everything connected 
with him is wonderful and glorious. It is a bound- 
less theme. It has to man a deathless interest ; for 
it is that which alone brings life and hope to a dying 
world. In him — in his person, character, and 
kingdom — are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge. Whatever other treasures of power, 
wealth, or wisdom, a man may gain, not to know 
this wisdom is to be a fool indeed, not to gain this 
unsearchable treasure is to be poor for ever. 

And now this gospel of the Son of God, with all 
its unspeakable blessings, is committed to us, not 
only to be embraced as our life and the life of our 



196 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

children, but to be made known to the ends of the 
earth, to be spread abroad to the farthest nations, 
to be preached to every creature under heaven. 
" Till I come/' is the only termination of the work, 
the only limit of the great commission. This is the 
one grand mission and work of the blood-bought 
church of Christ — to preach his gospel. The field 
is the world. And the day of labour is from the 
first to the second advent. He has himself con- 
nected these two great events in such a way that 
the church can never forget the one, or lose sight 
of the other. " As oft as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he 
come." Here all that is sacred in the past blends 
with all that is glorious in the future. We must 
remember him, must love him, must celebrate his 
death, must preach his gospel, must labour, and 
toil, and suffer, and watch, and pray, till he come. 
For surely he shall come. As surely as he died 
and rose again, he shall come. Now we see through 
a glass darkly. Now we know in part and we un- 
derstand in part. But then we shall see face to 
face, and know even as we are known. We know 
not yet what we shall be ; but we know that when 
he shall appear we shall be like him. Our vile 
bodies shall be fashioned like unto his glorious body. 
Our life is hid with Christ in God, so that when he 
shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory. 
This is our hope, this our confident and joyful ex- 
pectation. " To you," says the apostle, "who are 



RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 197 

troubled, rest with us in hope, when the Lord Jesus 
shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty 
angels, in flaming lire, taking vengeance on them 
that know not God, and that obey not the gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; who shall be punished 
with everlasting destruction from the presence of 
the Lord, and from the glory of his power ; when 
he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be 
admired in all them that believe." 

In the person and character of Immanuel, we are 
to remember, God has made the brightest manifesta- 
tion of himself. "No man hath seen God at any 
time ; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom 
of the Father, he hath declared him." " He that 
hath seen me," said Jesus, u hath seen the Father." 
We know the heart of God even as we know the 
heart of Jesus. We become acquainted with the 
character of God, as we become personally ac- 
quainted w r ith the character of Jesus. u For God 
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ." There are various methods in which God 
has manifested his character and glory to his intel- 
ligent, moral creatures ; and there are manifold 
channels through which this glory shines. He has 
revealed himself everywhere in nature, every work 
of his almighty hand proclaiming his glory. He 
has revealed himself in providence, every event, 
great and small, uttering an intelligible voice, lie 
17 * 



198 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

has revealed himself in every page of his written 
and inspired oracles — the holy Scriptures. He has 
revealed himself also in the work of the Holy Ghost 
upon the regenerated human soul ; and, indeed, in 
all the deep instincts and utterances of the soul it- 
self. But, above all other manifestations is this 
glorious manifestation of the word made flesh. 
For here it is that we behold the essence of all Di- 
vine knowledge and perfection — infinite wisdom, 
goodness, truth, beauty, and love, personified, em- 
bodied, exemplified in the character of a living man 
like ourselves, in all points tempted as we are, yet 
without sin. This is the manifestation of God which 
comes nearest to our bosoms, and is most easily un- 
derstood by us. 

We learn something of God in every manifesta- 
tion he has made of himself. Day unto day utter- 
eth speech of him ; night unto night showeth know- 
ledge. There is no speech nor language where his 
voice is not heard. The signs of his eternal power 
and Godhead overspread the heavens. His glory 
fills the earth. His stately steppings are seen in 
the great waters. His wisdom shines in every star 
that gems the firmament. His mighty acts are 
visible in all the movements of his providence. His 
justice, holiness, and truth are proclaimed from 
every line of his word. The thunders of his law, 
the beseeching overtures of his gospel, the gentle, 
yet irresistible, pleadings of his gracious Spirit — 
all alike make known to man something of the deep 



RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 199 

things of God. But it is in Immanuel, most of all, 
that the soul of man finds the clear light of God. 

He above all others is the way, and the truth, and 
the life. 

"Till God in human flesh ! 

My thoughts no comfort find ; 
The holy, just, and sacred Three 

Are terrors to my mind. 
But if Immanuel's face appear 

My hope, my joy begins ; 
His name forbids my slavish fear, 

His grace removes my sins." 

Ten thousand times ten thousand guilty, helpless, 
dying sinners in all ages, have been led to admire 
the beauty of Immanuel, as they have seen him to 
be the only and all-sufficient Saviour, both able and 
willing to give them that succour which no other 
being in the universe could ever give. As they 
have found in him a friend and a helper just suited 
to their lost estate — the sacrifice for all their sins, 
the supply of all their wants, the antidote to all 
their woes, the Prophet, Priest, King, and Captain 
of their salvation, they have been made to rejoice 
with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. For all 
the manifestations of God's character, however 
made, and for all the gifts of his grace, however 
communicated, we ought to be profoundly grateful. 
But for the gift of his Son — for the manifestation 
of his amazing love in Christ, how can we ever suf- 
ficiently praise him! AVhcre shall we find words to 



200 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

express, or images to shadow forth, our conception 
of the debt of gratitude which we owe to God for 
such a Saviour ! We can only take the language 
of an apostle and cry — " Thanks be unto God for 
his unspeakable gift." 

When we consider what Jesus hath done for us — 
how he left the bright abodes of glory and stooped 
to our lost estate — how he hath borne our griefs and 
carried our sorrows in his own body on the tree — 
how he endured all that men and demons could in- 
flict while drinking for us the wrath of God — how 
he hath taken our feet from an horrible pit and from 
the miry clay, and placed them upon the rock of 
ages, and put a new song into our mouths, even the 
song of praise for his delivering grace — how he 
hath made us, who were by nature the children of 
wrath and heirs of death, the children of adoption, 
sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, heirs of 
God, and joint heirs with himself to an inheritance 
which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth 
not away, reserved in heaven for all them that be- 
lieve, we can only fall in adoring homage at his feet, 
and cry, " Thanks be to God for his unspeakable 

gift.- " 

When we think of life here, as it is to some, and 
as it would be to us, without him — the loneliness, 
desolation, and darkness of a life without hope and 
without God in the world ; when we think how we 
should feel and act, with every light of the gospel 
and every hope of heaven for ever extinguished in 



RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION, 201 

our souls ; when the friends of our youth hare all 

fallen around us ; when the dearest objects of our 
human affections are sleeping in the ground; when 
all our bodily powers give token of approaching 
decay and dissolution, and the storms of adversity 
are beating upon our souls ; when our days are all 
sunless, and our nights without a star, and there 
seems nothing before us but the blackness of death 
— unending death — Oh! when we think of such a 
condition as this — the condition of the unbelieving 
sceptic, who cares nothing for Jesus, and then think 
of all that he has done for us, and of the glory 
which yet awaits us, we cry with adoring and admiring 
homage, "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable 
gift!" 

When, as God's suffering children, we pass 
through many a dark valley of humiliation on life's 
weary pilgrimage ; when we are compelled to eat the 
bread of carefulness, to drink the cup of tears, to 
wrestle with gloomy doubts and fears, to feel that 
the deep waters are ready to engulf us ; when all 
our plans of life seem to fail, our best purposes to 
be defeated, our fondest hopes to be utterly crushed 
and blasted ; when all our enemies have risen up 
against us ; when the world has cheated us, friends 
and kindred have forsaken us, and the very church 
and people of God deceived us ; when our very heart- 
strings are breaking for sorrow, and there seems 
nothing left for us but to lie down and die — wretched, 
poor, despised, forsaken, tired of the world, and yet 



202 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

feeling unfit for heaven — counting all men liars, and 
yet unable to look up lovingly and confidingly into 
the face of God — Oh ! in such an hour of tempta- 
tion and despondency, what a voice of consolation 
is that which comes to us from the lips of Jesus, as 
we open again the sacred pages, and, with streaming 
eyes, read those calm, tender, soul-subduing, and un- 
fathomable words, "Ye believe in God; believe also 
in me ! In my Father's house are many mansions ; 
if it were not so, I would have told you ; I go to 
prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare 
a place for you, I will come again, and receive you 
unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." 
And then, if never before, we cry, with chastened, 
humble, loving hearts, "Thanks be unto%od for his 
unspeakable gift !" 

" For such compassions, O my God, 
Ten thousand thanks are due — 
For such compassions, I esteem 
Ten thousand thanks too few." 

And when, at last, we look forward to the time 
of our departure from this mortal scene, and are 
called to pass through the dark valley and shadow 
of death ; when our earthly house of this tabernacle 
is about to be dissolved, and we feel that with every 
heaving breath and every ebbing pulse we are but 
drawing nearer and nearer to the presence of God ; 
when we feel that in the lone and untried valley 
we need a guide and a comforter, a rod and a staff 



RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 208 

to support our trembling footsteps, a friendly bosom 

on which to loan the weary head, an Almighty arm 

to protect us, and a voice of love to cheer us and 
bid us fear no evil — where then shall we find the 
guide and comforter of our souls ? Who but Im- 
manuel can be with us then, go w T ith us through all 
the darkness of death, and bid us welcome to the 
fields of immortality, when it is passed ? When we 
feel, as we must all soon feel, that the only guide 
and counsellor through this dread passage, is Jesus ; 
that the only rod and staff to comfort us there, the 
only loving bosom on which we can lean our dying 
heads, and the only friendly voice which can come 
to cheer us, is that of Jesus who hath trodden it be- 
fore us, ^01 may we cry, "Thanks be to God! — 
Glory be to God in the highest for this unspeakable 
gift ! Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, 
hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the re- 
surrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 

God with us ! God incarnate ! God our Saviour, 
Brother, Lord ! How it should elevate our thoughts, 
how it should kindle our devotions, how it should 
bind our hearts in holy love to contemplate the 
great and blessed mystery of God manifest in the 
flesh ! that God has been with us, and that we shall 
be with him for ever, he in our nature, and we 
through him made partakers of the Divine nature ! 
What more could God do for us? What more do 
we need in order that Christ should win our hearts ? 



204 THE BEAUTY OF IMMANUEL. 

When we think of the loved ones, who were so 
recently with us, who have left the church below 
and gone up to the general assembly and church of 
the first-born, having washed their robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb — when we look 
around upon our broken family circles, and feel that 
those with whom we took sweet counsel here, are 
now in the presence of Jesus, beholding his glory 
face to face — when we think of all those venerable 
and honoured names, whose praises were in all the 
church below, and whose toil-worn but happy spirits 
have passed away, even during the last year, to join 
the ranks and to swell the chorus of the redeemed 
on high — when we think that these with the saints 
of all ages are now with Jesus, and that we also, 
after a few more years of toil and sorrow, shall join 
their blessed company, to part no more for ever; 
how should our hearts burn within us, as we tell of 
Immanuel's love, of all that we owe to him, and of 
all that we hope to be ! 

Here then let us come, even to the cross of Im- 
manuel ; here let us find rest in a sense of his love ; 
here let us admire and adore, as, for time and eter- 
nity, we commit our souls to his keeping. 






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